The Water Lallies

Oil on canvas

30.48cm x 25.40cm x 3.82cm

Polari is a gay slang language an ever-changing collection of gypsy, yiddish and circus slang mixed with Italian and English rhyming slang. A form of  slang used in Britain by some actors, circus and fairground showmen, professional wrestlers, merchant navy sailors, criminals, prostitutes, and the gay subculture

It's quite amazing when you meet someone who can speak it still as it's mainly died out. But in the 1960's it was more common place.

LALLIES was legs. ' Look at the Lallies on her' - meaning he has great legs.

This very expressive piece is a play on Monet's 'Water lillies' but rather than a group of beautiful water flowers we actually have a group of beautiful men.

The sister series to Summer 2020. These pieces became more abstract, more faceless. The days turn to nights. The ponds and pools are left behind as we enter the woods and the world of cruising. Hook ups and orgies, strangers meeting the regulars. Whilst creating the larger pieces of Summer 2020 I used smaller canvases as palettes throughout the process . This allowed me to keep things very free for this latter series of work. Not worrying about the final structures, I would see what marks were left and, staring into the brush stokes, the raw movements that had been smeared on the canvases I would see figures, just made out. Faceless. The result is quite raw, naive but it helps capture the lust and the sexuality of an evening meet up. 

The history of cruising in the U.K. is complex, sexual and secret on one hand and yet with a determined sense of community, of similarity and a place where anything goes.