The digital art works in this book were made in 2024 and are selections from my newest series The Anthropocene Blood Book. They bring together different interests of mine that began when I spent time in London in the 1970’s. This project brought together my longtime interest in Victorian romanticism, that was often used to convey a sense of escapism and to explore themes of the supernatural and the irrational. I have been influenced by different artists but especially Richard Dadd’s wonderful painting, The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke which I first saw as a teenager in the Tate Museum. the art of Victorian decoupage or scrapbook making (and how it evolved into contemporary collage and montage in surrealism and fantasy art and digital art) led me to find the strange Victorian Blood Book, a unique scrap book made in 1854 by the British Reverand John Bingley Garland for his daughter as a wedding gift.
The Anthropocene Blood Book is a visual evocation of the un/reality of the Anthropocene, this time of steep decline in the planet initiated with the first atomic tests. Using the original and obscure Blood Book as a starting point by keeping the drips of blood, I built each artwork from unique imagery that are centered around the two themes that have concerned me the most throughout my lifetime- the degradation of the planet, and the proliferation of nuclear weapons and waste.
