Oil Painting (2017)
Inspired by travel in Western China from Kashgar to Xi'An along the route of the old Silk Road. In Dunhuang, in additional to the cultural and historic sites, it is possible to visit the desert sand dunes. The majority of visitors to the dunes are Chinese and the site has taken several steps to make their perhaps first visit to a dune pleasurable: climbing a dune is usually two stpes up, slide down a step, experience and this was possible but there was also a path and a set of steps to the top of a dune. More inspirationally for my painting, visitors were offered the opportunity to rent bright orange footwear covers, which prevented the incursion of sand. I imagine the bright colour was chosen so that no visitor could inadvertently walk out still wearing the "boots". The colours made me think more of the choices made in graphic novels and I adopted a more 'comic panel' approach for this painting.
Date: 15/11/2017
