Recent Work

The most interesting part of this piece was peoples reactions to the work and how presumptuous they where. Everyone was convinced that it was something to do with my own grandmother.
So this made me think what if I completely made up a person and if I was careful could I map their whole life out without anyone realising?
So that is what I did I collected photos birthday cards old keep sakes, voice recording and I decided to display them in a formal way. The white room was the white cube environment but the glass display draws I borrowed from Exeter RAMM and the entomology pins kept the installation within the realms of the museum, which everybody believes to be truthful.

Part of this Installation was a recording of my father talking about pivotal moments in his childhood and I took one of these and began a series of rough sketches I then turned these into a large painting.

The story he told me was of walking to work when he was sixteen and coming to a stream on a very cold frosty morning. He knew this stream very well all his life and knew exactly where to step and jump across. Just as he did this a huge white heron burst out of the water and he describes this moment as very meaning full a turning point. I thought that it would be very interesting to work from someone else's experience and story so I did the painting without asking for any more information and tried to imagine that the memory was mine. I am very pleased with this piece and I feel that it was a very good closing point for that theme.

Quite recently I went to Exeter Cathedral and saw a carving of a corpse which was in the walls of the building. It was a reminder of the mortality of humans and that, when your time comes you leave exactly as you came, with nothing. I like this idea, I am not religious but I feel that this message didn't need to have a religious point, but it was something which was very poignant and true.

Also I have been looking at different ways in which death is talked about within our society and as I have a small daughter it occurred to me that I spend every night reading her fairy tales which most of which manage to communicate death to us from a very young age. They are also something that we all know.

So I have been doing some illustrations to go with a grimm's fairy tale called the Almond Tree I am happy with the images so far and would like to remove the text and have a small hand held picture book.

Copyright Louie Crooks 2008
www.louiecrooks.co.uk

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