Sicily 1944 and 2017

I have been mining an unusual source of material for my large drawings - old black and white photographs that my father took of ports in North Africa and Italy during World War Two. I was fascinated by these photographs not only for their content and drama but for their composition as well. Although I have been altering the composition in my final drawings in order to make them more "my own," there is not much work I have to do other than get the gist of the scene on to paper and work from there.

In a photograph that I believe to have been taken in Sicily in 1944, a group of women wash clothes. A man watches from a doorway in the background. There is a darydreaming expression on a woman’s face. Of course drudgery is a good thing to be distracted from. But where was that glance in to the distance taking her?

For my final charcoal and pastel drawing, I left the man on the left out of the picture. I joked to my stepsister that I sent him back inside to do the ironing, but really I just wanted more room for the ladder. Other final changes allude to the year 2017, the crescents of the eclipse in the woodwork, and a hurricane looming in the wash water.