Painting 16: Untitled (After Xanadu)

Oil on found object, 59x44cm, Frame size - 66x51cm, 2009

I made this painting as part of a themed exhibition in Studio 106 for the Brighton Festival Fringe.  The studio is on Coleridge Street in the Poets Corner area of Hove.  I think there were about 18 of us working there at the time, and we decided to take 3 lines each from the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and make work inspired by those lines.

These were my lines:

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,  
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,  
A mighty fountain momently was forced:

It was really refreshing to be challenged in this way and it was fascinating to see how each of us expressed our lines within the framework of our practice. I found it quite a different process being inspired by a poem to being inspired by a song or piece of music.