Image size: 15.0 x 22.5 cms
Paper size: 24.0 x 30.2 cms

John Blakemore writes that “The tulip work began during a period of crisis in my practice.

In attempting to define the parameters of a continuing, a possible practice I was writing and studying critical theory. The activity of writing was both pleasurable and frustrating, the blank page a tyranny which on occasion necessitated escape.

I decided to photograph as a parallel activity, an exploration of picture making to complement and inform my writing. The room in which I most often wrote was my kitchen, a confined space, a table, chairs, pictures on the wall, and on the table (a coincidence of season) a bowl of tulips, photographed, initially, because they were there, one element of the space I had decided to explore.

Gradually the tulip emerged as the dominant motif, as object of a continuing fascination, text and pretext for an activity of picture making.” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p145))

John Blakemore writes that “

The tulip is a flower of sensual and gestural elegance, of constant transformation, worthy of contemplation, of a prolonged and intensive scrutiny. The sustained working and reworking of a theme, a motif, facilitates an accumulation of reference through which the tulip can function both as object of celebration and as metaphor.

” (John Blakemore, Photographs 1955-2010, **Dewi Lewis Publishing, 2011 (p152))