Heavy Rainbows
Heavy Rainbows
Heavy Rainbows contains several positive stories involving triumph over adversity such as my life-changing motorcycle accident which ironically gave me the opportunity to return to full time education, achieve a BA Honours Degree and pursue a career in art.
Several chapters focus on my collections of theme-based art, including climate change, animal welfare, and the global mental health crisis which appears to have developed from the recent COVID pandemic.
I spent several years teaching art and English functional skills, many of my students had special needs and I felt they'd been let down by the education system, consequently it was particularly satisfying helping them gain in many cases their first nationally recognised qualification which, not only improved their confidence, but served as a springboard for a new and rewarding life within today's somewhat turbulent and challenging society.
Heavy Rainbows discusses artists who've influenced me over the years including Van Gogh, Picasso, Tamara de Lempicka, Roger Dean, Chris Ofili, and Banksy. And art movements such as Impressionism, Surrealism, Art Deco, Cubism, and social realism, which I believe offers a personal and unpretentious perspective of pioneering styles and ideologies that affected the direction of our creative world from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Mark Cawood
Available at Amazon for £10.71. To purchase or read a free sample chapter, click on the link:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Heavy-Rainbows-Mark-Cawood/dp/1035838931
Youtube Heavy Rainbows trailer: https://youtu.be/gst9g0bdRPA
The cover is based on my oil painting entitled Dark Side of Light, 70 x 50 cm, 2022.
There are two versions and this is the one favoured by the publishers Austin Macauley.
Austin Maccauley bookshop link:
The blurb on the back of the book:
An extraordinarily true life account of a left handed forklift truck driver who, after a catastrophic life changing accident, became a right handed professional artist. Heavy Rainbows conveys an honest, no frills autobiographical account of how a single unforeseen event completely changed the direction of Mark's entire life, and the subsequent adventures that followed involving devastating lows and euphoric highs that are unique, engaging, and inspirational.
Personal experiences and events that influenced Mark's development as a person are told chronologically, culminating in a collection of artwork that conveys powerful emotionally charged contemporary issues such as global warming, mental health and animal welfare. Each chapter incorporates humour and satire that contrast with episodes of dark life changing experiences, offering the reader a thought-provoking unpretentious slice of reality, underpinned by art, to convey an in depth personal story involving triumph over adversity.
The painting's composition was developed from an interest in alternative ways of seeing, including Pablo Picasso's pioneering cubist art which looks at inanimate objects from multiple angles. My work differs somewhat from cubism by offering an element of fauvism through the use of vibrant colouring rather than the constrained pale greens, beige and browns traditionally used.
The composition is concerned with environmental pollution advocates environmental conservation through a cubist still life involving a rainbow, broken guitar and fractured plant that are each illuminating out from the void.
The guitar is broken, symbolising dysfunction next to a green plant that appears to be alive though certainly not thriving in its natural environment, a reference to climate change and the impending catastrophic consequences of excessive carbon emissions from our unquenchable thirst for burning fossil fuel.
Two versions of the painting were created in 2023. This is the rejected version submitted for the cover of Heavy Rainbows.