GK GALLERY  & TEA ROOM

I studied Illustration with Animation at Manchester School of Art, and throughout my education there I maintained a consistent interest in narrative. My dissertation was centred on the archaeology of storytelling, specifically detailing the work of celebrated novelist Alan Garner, and the inherent timelessness that his stories convey; elements of his books plucked as they are from the folktales he was told as a boy.

 

During the final year of my degree, and with the degree show in mind, I wanted to write a story with similar roots in natural imagery, and the undefinable substance of a folktale, presenting the impossible in an environment that we recognise in part, making it almost plausible.

 

The work displayed at the GK Gallery are illustrations of this story, which I titled ‘The Eden Tree’. Set in an alternate universe on an ancient tree of cosmic size, the story follows the mischievous exploits of a boy named Chester Settington, and his exasperated older sister Grayle on an adventure into territory they have never explored, into the ominous ring of Fog which shrouds the Tree, and what lies beyond.