Pin-Up in My Pocket, 1997

This is one of three pieces of work conceived in 1997 based on the central image of a very well-appointed young lady. I first came across the model in question during my first year away at secondary school. There she was, probably no more than a couple of inches tall, posturing towards the back of a pocket-size magazine printed solely in black and white belonging to one of my schoolboy pals. Well, when one is a thirteen-year-old boy with fast developing hormones, images like this can have quite an effect. Certainly, that was the case in 1960. So much so, the magazine found its way into my hands, and the appealing photograph was cut out.

Stationery items were somewhat more limited in those days, so to protect this discovered "icon", I attached this "find" onto a thin piece of card with slender bands of sticky-back plastic. The resulting treasure was then kept for safety in a wallet. Over the ensuing years, the wallet was lost to the sands of time and completely forgotten, and that included Mademoiselle in her French cami-knickers and arresting pose. However, when moving house about a third of a century later, I found the wallet with this once precious but forgotten item in it.

The passing years had had their effect, not so much on my hormones but on this little paper image. The glue of the sticky-back plastic had permeated the paper, which was printed on both sides, and the reverse-side image was drawn through the paper to be partly visible from the front. An unexpected visual phenomenon had happened here, albeit accidentally, and it certainly related to other pieces of work in which I was exploring how the quality of an image operated in relation to the visual depth of the work’s surface.

In striving to be an artist, any form of inspiration is welcome and this chance rediscovery was no exception.