Crestfallen (Original)

I found a stack of old letters at a local clearance company while I was looking for furniture for the studio. I had a strong feeling I needed to buy some, so I felt through the different bundles and picked one out without reading any of them.

The letters are from a man to his girlfriend, who lived a long way from him. I only have his side. This is the first in the stack. He has just come home from visiting her, on a high after a wonderful time together, and there's a letter from her ending the relationship. He had wanted to ask her to marry him. He is crestfallen, and confused to realise she hadn't experienced the visit the way he had.

I painted it in elderberry ink I made and modified with iron. It goes on a dark, passionate red, and as it dries and oxidises it gets darker and greyer. I wanted that change to reflect the change in his emotions. The mandala is tight and intact in the lines at the heart, but drips and disintegrates at the edges, an unravelling of something precious from the outside in. At the end of the letter he offers her an olive branch, and the intact centre is the hope in that.

Elderberry ink keeps changing over time and reacts to its surroundings, especially light, so depending on how it's framed and where it hangs, it won't always look exactly the way it does now. It will probably become a little greyer and paler. I see that as a continuation of the story, and of the conversation between these two people and this time. It's sealed with a UV varnish spray, but framing it behind UV-filtering glass and keeping it out of direct sun will still slow the change. It comes with a print of the scan, the same size, with the date it was scanned written on the back, so you'll have a record of how it looked then.

This is the first of a series of four, and each one stands on its own. If you'd like to know when the others are finished, or to talk about more than one, get in touch.

Elderberry ink modified with iron, over the original letter on 300gsm hot-pressed watercolour paper. 30 × 30 cm. 2026. Signed by me. Sold unframed; the frame in the photo is for display only.