Artist and musician Greg Gilbert put pen to paper after his cancer diagnosis, creating a series of ink drawings that express some of the “fragments and scenes” that went through his mind.
“These images arrived fully formed and were almost immediately set down without any finessing. They show fragments and scenes which began to come to my mind at the time of my diagnosis. They weren’t dreams or fantasies, but stills that occur unpredictably.”
“It felt so necessary and the whole sequence came in a great rush,” he explains. “The darkness that comes over in the images undoubtedly reflects the fear I was experiencing at the time, but I also find them comforting. I didn’t question their meaning, and just trusted that they were expressing something about my condition.”
The sequence of illustrations are featured in solo exhibition A Gentle Shrug Into Everything, on display at Southampton City Art Gallery until May 6; southamptoncityartgallery.com. His poetry collection Love Makes A Mess of Dying is published by Smith|Doorstop, priced £7.50
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