The Exhibition.

The paintings in this small exhibition are something of a departure for me. My previous solo exhibitions at the Oxmarket were all informed by landscape narratives that had meaning for me. This exhibition is different, though equally meaningful, and personal.

Born in 1943, I grew up in the austerity of post war Coventry. My playgrounds were bomb sites, the remains of wartime shadow factories and the canals. As a gas engineer, my father was in a reserved occupation, as was my maternal grandfather building armoured cars and aircraft parts for the war effort. My parent’s pre-war home had been bombed during the Coventry Blitz in 1941 and they had been re-housed in a terraced house elsewhere in the city. This was the first home I remember.

Whilst clearing her bungalow after my mother died, I came across several black and white photographs and newspapers from the 1940s, some of which depicted the loss of her own home as well as some images of damage to the school that I was destined to attend. It was these images that led me to research further the Coventry Blitz and to reflect on my early childhood in Coventry

It was these thoughts and reflections that formed the starting point for the small series of paintings exhibited here. The exhibition’s title refers to the code name “Moonlight Sonata” given by the German Luftwaffe to the bombing raid on Coventry in November 1940. Of course, we are all familiar with the artistic images of the Blitz by the men and women who were given full or part-time contracts by the War Artists' Advisory Committee (WAAC). The 5,000 works produced or purchased included works by artists who were, or were to become, major figures in post-war British art. Directly or indirectly their influence on later generations has been profound. Indeed, the works in the current exhibition are in debt to their legacy.

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