The Fish Cycle

The Fish Cycle is a series of larger oil paintings as 'entertainment' (in the Graham Greene sense of the word). Partially autobiographical, a binding thread connects all nine works. The narrative is not linear, if anything, it's loosely circular. The fish, having been ‘stolen’ from the city of Glasgow’s coat of arms (I cannot imagine stealing anything more pointless than a fish!), provides the given starting point. Elements of faded memories, fears, fantasy, previous endeavours and dreams merge and coalesce around a loose, timeless matrix.

In the enclosed, almost subterranean world I grew up in (Alasdair Gray’s Lanark), the stolen fish acquires a transcendental value; used as collateral in a card game; sold from a suitcase up a tenement close and retrieved by a piece of imagined yet-to-be invented technology, the ‘progulator’. Meanwhile, the only recording of the ‘Famous Stadium Café gig’ (that never happened... like the fish that never swam) plays in the background.

A Mexican standoff ensues between ‘Chaos’ and ‘Logic’ above the herd impulse in an unrenovated Copeland Road underground station. Who will retrieve the fish? The city holds its breath… On the other hand there seems to be nothing to prevent the bad guy ‘Logic’ from driving poor Ophelia to her fate in the cold, briny Clyde by his relentless reasoning, whilst a card game decides the fate of the fish in the tenement (blue blind) in the background. Meanwhile, a fight has broken out in a chichi art gallery and the only solace offered to the victim by the small boy is one of the valuable fish.

All work in this series are oil on canvas.