When this work was still in it’s embryonic early days I thought the show would be about the pall of anxiety that we find ourselves in right now, trump/brexit/Ford/……yadayadayada. As the painting took shape and started the sprawl across the studio I realized the work was shinning a light on one of my own personal times of anxiety, my immigration back to Canada from England. The world of Chris aged 11 was pretty idyllic, a seaside town, football on the green, green fields, fish and chips, friends, the beach, and then it stopped. We were leaving. Back to Canada, where I was born, which I did not know, at all. In my mind, this was a frightening prospect. Frigid Arctic conditions wild animals. A scary world made up of long-distance truckers, tobacco-chewing Marlboro men. It was to be a world filled with people wearing blue jeans (how odd?), drug addicts, and a general feeling that everything I held to be real, and good, and joyful was being taken away. Needless to say I was a bit of a clammy, little ginger wreck. And so, this show is a bit of a mash up of new fears and forebodings, and ancient personal anxieties, that all seem quaint now.