The Burnham on Sea picture was quickly succeeded by a whole sequence of small fragmentary gouaches in which favourite motifs of the postcard world (such as the prevelances of foreground litter-bins and the mysteriously high incidence of red cars bisected by lamp-posts) made their appearance. A special emblematic breed of people seemed to inhabit the parallel planet that cards depict, people trained in an eloquence of gesture and expressiveness of movement more telling than those of any corps de ballet. I made studies of them as diligently and reverentially as, in another age, I might have made drawings from the antique. Some of these frozen moments exist in isolation as exhibits from Rimbaud's savage parade while others formed series such as The Quest for Irma.

Teaching to earn a living forced me to divide up my week between two places. To gain a small advantage from this situation I started some double pictures. I made the same picture twice (working from the same area of a postcard over the same period) in Wolverhampton and in London, bringing the paintings together only at the finish as a single piece whose twin compositions revealed a subtle variance of mood and emphasis.

With these, as with most of the postcard-derived pictures I indulged my liking for silly scholarship by building into the title (which invariably formed part of the picture) all the pedantic details of the postcard's own self-description; its serial number, publisher, place of printing etc. There is often a glum poetry in such particulars, as for example 'In Old Steine Gardens Brighton. LP 395. Landsdowne Publishing Co. Printed in France.'  > >

tomphillips.co.uk  > >  Paintings and Drawings