The Stranger
On the morning of May 1st, 2022, in celebration of May Day, I went exploring the woods and flatland near my house. I wanted to experience the sense of potential abundance all around, in contrast to the frugality of lockdown, and the winter woods of the Hibernia series.
I live near The Green Man roundabout, in the borough of Waltham Forest. I thought of the Green Man of folklore and the Wodewose or wild man of the woods, of tricksters old and new. I remembered an essay by the sociologist Georg Simmel, The Stranger. In it, Simmel talks about the nature of community and the relationship between being attached to and being apart from it, close and far, conformity and freedom.
I have returned often to the theme of The Stranger or The Outsider in my work: the artist as outsider; the outsider as social critic; the ostracized outsider, feared and distrusted; the Wodewose or medieval wild man; Jung's Shadow Self, a stranger unto ourselves. And closely related to The Stranger and the Outsider is The Visitor.
The Stranger paintings were started at a time when rebirth felt possible after the pandemic and the trees and hedgerows of May seemed to represent new beginnings. Then I had an accident which put my work behind by a year. But when I resumed these May paintings, I found myself thinking about the German story of the Pied Piper, the outsider who was at first welcomed, then was cheated and exacted his price. I was intrigued by the implications of it today, at a time of mass migration.
The story of the Pied Piper gave me the opportunity to revisit early twentieth illustrations by Margaret Tarrant, who lived in the Surrey village of Peaslake and I have incorporated some of these.
EM May 2023