Thames Embryo Leaps Spidey Pods

There are numerous themes or motifs that run through my work and occasionally some of them will meet, clash, or overlap one another in a specific piece. One such piece manifested after I came across this particularly lovely mudlarking find; a piece of driftwood that I waxed up and mounted on a metal stand. I call it find ‘Thames Embryo Leaping’. As soon as I discovered it, it made me think of some kind of partially-formed or embryonic quadruped, in the act of leaping.

 

'Thames Embryo Leaping', found object sculpture, artist Wayne Chisnall

There was nothing particularly meaningful in the crossover that then took place (other than the fact that once a visual overlap has been created, a new connection is formed, and that connection can lie around in the brain and may, almost imperceptibly, influence a creative decision further down the line). I was simply messing around with one of my Spidey Pods screen prints, painting over the surface of the print. As I got into the flow of painting over it, looking around me for some visual stimulation, I focused in on a couple of mudlarking finds from a recent trip to the banks of the Thames. One was an interestingly-shaped piece of bone (worn smooth by its years in the river), and the other was Thames Embryo Leaping, so I incorporated drawings of them both into the over-working of the print.

 

'Thames Embryo Leaps Spidey Pods', over-painted screen print, artist Wayne Chisnall

The Spidey Pods screen print is an editioned print, based upon one of my earlier enamel paintings, Spidey Segments. And this painting is based upon a drawing I made late one night after I woke from a dream. I no-longer remember much about the dream, except that it might have been loosely related to that scene at the end of the 1956 version of Invasion of The Body Snatchers, where the main character climb onto the back of a truck only to find that it’s full of alien pods (or at least that’s how I remember the scene). 

'Spidey Pods', screen print, artist Wayne Chisnall

However, I do remember that before I went to sleep that night I’d been peeling the thin layer of skin off of a segment of orange, and had been fascinated by the mass of fusiform pod-shapes (I believe they’re called ‘juice vesicles’) inside the segment. So maybe that triggered the dream, which triggered the drawing, which was of a load of pods, piled upon each other and getting smaller as they disappear into the distance.

 

'Spidey Segments' painting, artist Wayne Chisnall

Once I’d drawn the pods I wanted to dress them in something; something that was meaningful to me. So I chose something that I’d been passionate about as a child. As well as my childhood love of old horror and sci-fi movies (hence Invasion of the Body Snatchers), I loved horror and superhero comics, so I chose elements of the 1970s style Spider-Man costume.

 

'Spidey Segments' drawing, artist Wayne Chisnall

And as I mentioned earlier, the mashing together of unrelated images forces new connections and sometimes new meanings.