Project 1
Acrylic 610mm x 910mm
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My grandmother looks out from a winter coat and tippet in a picture taken at Coles department store, Sheffield, in the reign of Queen Victoria!.
in our own family trees we are all standing on the shoulders of our ancestors. You can't choose where you came from but only where you go next.
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#4 the family tree
Giclee Print
All prints are giclée quality – the best digital print technology available. Archival inks, cold press watercolour paper and colour correction by industry experts from Copyart, Richmond,. Your artwork will be checked and packed into a tube ready to be framed by you.
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Limited edition full size print $400 inc p&p in NZ
One of a signed limited edition of 50
Printed area 610mm x 910mm with 20mm border
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If you want a different size, please use contact page for a custom size and price.
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Original Available $2,500
scroll down for story
the family tree
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London 1921 A Girl
Everyone has a story to tell.
“So what is your story?” she said. They were lying naked in her bed having only met that afternoon - she felt both raw and delightfully wicked having acted so entirely out of character.
“I’m afraid mine is a sad story” he answered, in his lovely Northern Irish brogue,
“I grew up the eldest in a large family on a farm in County Antrim. My first brother was only 10 months younger than me, and along with my best mate Jack we did everything together. When war broke out, it was inevitable we’d all enlist into the same regiment and fight for our country. Jack and I were old enough but my brother had to lie about his age, so we pretended to be twins.
By God’s grace we were lucky to all three make it out alive. We didn’t go back home though, …after the troubles in Ireland….and they were crying out for labourers on the building sites in London. Mam wasn’t best pleased but we could earn enough to send money home and that helped. Then it seemed we had survived the war only to get stricken with the Spanish flu and this time only two of us made it out alive. We lost Jack.”
His lovely lilting voice cracked a little here, and he tightened his arm around her before carrying on.
“Jack had been sweet on this girl. They’d been walking out for a while and were going to get wed. I think he knew he was going to die because he asked me to look after her
if anything should happen to him. Two days later we were burying him. He didn’t know she was carrying his child.
We wed quickly so people would think it was mine. She had her pride and didn’t want me to marry her out of pity. But it wasn’t that.
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I didn’t do it for her. I did it for him. We had been everything to each other and I wanted to keep something of him if I could. He is such a beautiful baby. I’d lay down my life for that little boy. He has his dad’s dark brown eyes. You look into them and see an old soul. I can never leave him.
The war changed all of us. We saw things ….there are no words. If a life came out of a stolen night in Jack’s last few weeks then at least something of him remains. So that’s my story. I’ve never been unfaithful to her until today.”
“But you’re crying - you lovely soft hearted girl. ‘
‘It’s such a sad story,” she replied
She wasn’t generally one to cry but their lovemaking had stripped her bare and at that moment she felt closer to him than any other human being she had ever known.
A chance encounter, sitting opposite each other on the train from the west country, talking and talking, then a look, an embrace. And then they were running from the train station to her rented room and sneaking up the back stairs like two naughty children giggling. She had thrown her virginity into the wind and swept along with him.
No regrets. The war had changed the rules. If you didn’t seize life and squeeze out every drop you might not get another chance.
They dressed in silence: no hard feelings. It had been one mad perfect afternoon and later on, it transpired that there would be another child who had been conceived in a stolen moment, and another man who wed a girl and gave a child his name
- William.