Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find any of the earlier sketches for this illustration where I jotted down possible designs and imagery that came to mind after reading the article for the first time. However I do remember that I settled on the various elements I ended up using at an early stage. After drawing an approximate representation of each element I cut them out into their individual shapes and than rearrange them on the page, like a collage, until I came up with a layout that I felt was both balanced and coherent. The piece of backwards text on the bottom right of the painting was simply put in for my own ammusement, a hommage to the Seaseme Street end credits.

 

The writer is woken at 9.15 by the usual slap of letters falling on the hall floor, a comforting contact from a secure old world. With the constant drive for efficiency in privatised and public service providers the writer is reassured by his postman’s human touch as he regularly posts letters addressed to the writers previous flats in the area through his current letter box. His postman, Lionel, a Jamaican black as coal, sports greying sideburns and a gold tooth. He is slow but methodical, laughs at the writer’s jokes and greets him with “Alright my man”. He carries around with him a sense of place in life and mirthfulness that the writer suspects betrays the presence of grandchildren in his life. He recalls an occasion when he had to answer the door to receive a package from a replacement postman covering the regular guy’s holiday and was taken aback by the look of hate in the young replacements eyes upon registering that the writer was gay. It reminds him how too many gay people have their lives defined for them by being excluded or even vilified by strangers and their own families. With regards to family exclusion he stipulates that too many gays lack the balls to demand that they be included thoroughly, because the part that doubt themselves falter at the prospect of causing ripples and of taking responsibility.

While most of his gay friends left the bigotry of Ireland for New York and London at the earliest opportunity he stayed on in Dublin long enough to see a shift in attitude for the better, with the shackles of the church shaken off. Having witnessed a change in Irish society his life in London, like so many other things in life, is laced with uncertainty, pining for a life that could have been, paths that could have been taken.

On that note he returns to the subject of grandfathers. As he gets older he is becoming more aware of the richness of family life in its supportive nature, and how as a gay man he will never have children, and consequently, grandchildren to dote on as he imagines Lionel looks forward to doing on weekends. He closes the article by pondering the future for old gay men in the culture of “queerdom” where the body beautiful is everything and life is lived fast, and to excess. No place for the old.

I am always collecting bits and pieces of imagery that catch my eye for one reason or another: imagery that I think might be useful in a painting someday; a photograph from a magazine that reminds me of an idea I had; an image with an appealing use of colour, and so on. One such example are the frank marks Postal services stamp on letters, example of which I knew would come in use one day. Something that appeals to me about post is how you start off with say an envelope containing a letter, the clean, unmarked, pristine envelope is then inscribed with a name and address, stamps are stuck to its’ surface, frank marks are added as are signs of wear and tear of passing through various sorting machines, modes of transport, numerous hands, and the elements. When the letter eventually reaches its destination its surface, far from being pristine and unmarked, holds a visual record of a journey through marks made by a variety of sources. It puts me in mind of an attribute of street art that appeals to me, an attribute which it could be argued holds street art up as the epitome of Public Art, but that is an topic for future article.

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