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 also 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 Picasso, Rene Magritte, 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
Presently available in paperback, hardback and e-book format at Amazon, and other good bookstores
Youtube Heavy Rainbows trailer: https://youtu.be/gst9g0bdRPA
The cover is based on my oil painting Dark Spectrum of Light 60 x 50 cm, 2023. There are two versions and this is the one favoured by the publishers Austin Macauley.
Austin Maccauley bookshop link:
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 pollution and 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.
This is the rejected version entitled The Heavy Sound of Enlightenment 60 x 50 cm, 2023, submitted for the cover of Heavy Rainbows.
Heavy Rainbows is available in hardback, paperback and e-book format. The autobiography includes over seventy full colour photographs of my artwork created from childhood to recent times, and further examples of artwork that influenced my development from artists such as Picasso, Magritte, and Banksy.
