Giraffes and Chimney stacks The four paintings shown above are what remains of an earlier series, the inspiration came from an art teacher from my old comprehensive in south London during the early nineteen seventies. The art lesson would start with pencil and paper, being an all boy school, drawings followed certain themes, football matches, fictitious wars from distant history, science fiction, dream women etc. Our art teacher would give a personal one to one analyses. He would ask permission to illustrate his thoughts directly onto pupils drawings, as a result the fictitious war drawing would have dinosaurs marching in the distant background, space ships would suddenly sprout tropical plants and of course students drawing the houses opposite the school would have Giraffes gliding through the roof tops! Many of us were left more than confused as we carried our drawings to the next lesson. This art teacher was a great fan of Dali, so I suppose in a strange kind of way my Giraffes and chimneys are a homage to Dali. Dan

Daniel Milo Davis