Struggle by Daniel Goodwin

Ink and watercolour on paper – 11 x 24cm  – £350 mounted

I moved to Bloxham in December 2019 and Covid 19 arrived just as I was starting a project focusing on my new environment. This work is currently at an exploratory stage. My plans are to use it to develop a new series of paintings and prints which will reflect on the importance of place and connectedness.

Bloxham has a wonderful church at its centre, St Mary’s, which has particularly interesting mediaeval carvings which I have taken as a starting point. There are strong parallels between the times of great change in which they were made and the challenges we all face now. I am trying to use my work to begin to understand what the carvings tell me about the people that were here in previous centuries and what they might teach us about our own situation.

‘Struggle’

Alongside Covid 19 there has been significant social challenge, there have been positive outpourings of righteous anger such as the Black Lives Matter protests, but also less positive aspects such as food hoarding at the outset of the crisis and breaches of social distancing guidelines by people who don’t see why rules might apply to them. We all need to think harder about social connectedness and our responsibilities one to another for fairness and safety. This depiction at St Mary’s Bloxham of what appears to be a peasant and lord engaged in a dispute has resonances of the peasant’s revolt later in the 14th Century, which stuck at the heart of injustices such as serfdom, unpaid labour and poll taxes.

For any enquiries please contact Daniel at info@danielgoodwinart.com