Half a century

There's a palpable push now to get the film completed. Margaret Mytton is working hard to provide Derek Smith with the extra images of Dave's work that are required to fill small sections of the film and create the necessary balance between documentary footage, talking heads, and examples of Dave's work. Derek has promised us a copy of the film in its current state in a day or two, and he has even given a preview to a colleague familiar with film production for his view. Broadly the feedback was highly positive, but still a few minor tweaks need to take place.

In the process some interesting things are coming to light. Not least through the work Margaret is doing to improve the quality of the photographed images. As she has said many times, the recording of Dave's work on camera has been piecemeal and nearly always in far-from-ideal conditions; as a result it has been a mammoth task for her to create adequate photographs for use in the film. But in the process we've seen some of Dave's earliest work...

...such as this lovely drawing of his parents at home in Glyn Road, Hackney, London; probably drawn in the early 1960s. Then there's the late work, much of which deals with his illness and hospitalisation during the last decade of his life:

Above is a detail from one of a wonderful series he made using photographed prints combined with embroidery, made roughly half a century after the drawing. 50 years of drawings and paintings that describe a lifetime.