Much of my work involves story telling and parable. Here in 'Parable of the sower' (Hells Mouth Bay 2006) I have sown the beach with 5kg glass jewels and then photographed passers by picking them up and taking them home as treasured possessions. I then returned from my holiday with a bucket containing 5kg sand. The theme in a sense echo's Fernando Torres 'grief work ' which I tremendously admire but the empasis is not on sorrow but upon quiet joy-hence the subtitle of the parable (sand into glass -sorrow into joy) A key point of this work is that none of the participants in the parable except me was aware of the plot-this means that the pleasure was simple, real and lasting-from my point of view one could not more completely erase the presence of the artist than this.. One family observing the whole process came to ask me the next day as I was out checking the beach again.On hearing the explaination the man turned to his wife and said: "See I told you he was either an artist or a nutter!"
Parable enables us to carry profound issues into the postmodern world (like Rothko) but without the aggrandisment.
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