After twelve years of this, a conspiracy of circumstances, and my own ever more pressing need to leave advertising, drove me out of the agency scene once and for all, and I held my first One Man show, comprising some of the erotica (the tamer lot) accumulated over the years, some spinoffs from Ti Jean And his Brothers, some drawings of West Indian dancers (Bele, Pique, bongo, kalendar, etc.), and some drawings of black women in historical costume- the beginning of an ongoing fascination with La Belle Creole a la Bosco Holder, of which more later.
There was also the beginning of a series of folk lore pieces which could only have come out of- and after- the work on Ti Jean. It�s impossible to enter the Folk Lore arena without feeling the trod, the heavy, heavy trod of the master, Alf Cadillo, on your heels, and I was determined to work against his legacy, his seminal voice, rather than fall into the trap of outright imitation as so many have done, and I dearsay will continue to do, so powerful is the Cadillo bequest.. I wanted to forge my own interpretative stamp on the genre.
Also, by investing the subject matter with some of the linear and abstract fantasy of Art Nouveau, speaking in the same vocabulary as the great fairy-tale artists - Rackam, Heath-Robinson, etc. - I thought I could make the stories more accessible to an audience Cadillo was probably not aiming for - at least specifically - in the first place - Europe. |
