After Cleopatra

A return to a subject matter I first drew after being inspired by a holiday to Turkey and a visit to the ancient thermal pool of Pamukkale, once favoured by Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. In her time it was surmounted by a Roman Temple to Apollo with an ornate roof held up with Doric columns; today visitors swim over and around the Roman ruins.

For my ‘Cleopatra’s Pool’ charcoal drawings of 2005 I used photographs taken whilst there. For this series of acrylic paintings I used tourist imagery found on the internet – I simplified the scenes and removed many of the figures in the original photographs – Pamukkale is usually a very busy and popular destination.

The titles are states of existence that I feel we all experience in life; as I painted the ebbs and flows of the water came to represent the changing paths we follow in our lifetimes – forever in a state of flux and movement.

Painted during the summer of 2020, whilst a heatwave was hitting London, I think these painting also became fantasy images for myself – dreaming of a time when we could travel more easily and cool off in foreign waters!