Courcoux & Courcoux - Charlesworth

Last of Empire
Acrylic on canvas	40" x 30"	£4,150

This painting is OK by me and makes intuitive sense but, coming to write about it for the digestion of others, I'm left clutching at fugitive strands of narrative and explanation. Why, for example, has the dusky giantess a clock for a face and a fish-tail behind? Why does the monkey-frog on the rock wear a suede jerkin and football shorts? Why does the Don Estelle type in the khaki shorts and curious pith helmet discharge his blunderbuss into thin air? Why, rather than shot, does a white egg issue from the muzzle?
It might be disingenuous and possibly unhelpful, but the best I can say is this: if, on opening your curtains in the morning, you saw a bird singing in a tree, a blue double-decker bus passing by and a Chinese woman pushing a pram with a baby in it, you probably wouldn't ask why but accept this as a normal scene. This picture represents a normal scene in the humble canon of my work and if you cannot accept this reality then perhaps you should look away. But I hope not, naturally.
The fish, by the way, is a buttersby -- quite rare, I believe, in these waters.