“My paintings contain circumstances and emotions that are not simple in the way that a story might be, because my experience of life suggests that at every moment several, perhaps many circumstances are unfolding simultaneously. In this way, ordinary life is inscrutable and profound. Profound because the events in our lives contain a rhythm and poetry of their own, That is accepted by many people, doubted by many, and wondered at by philosophers. I wonder myself about the possible existence of a divine clockwork. SŒURS SANGUINES is an unusually apt example of this complex connectivity in life. A radiant young Persian refugee called Mehrangis Mahboubian inspired one of my paintings in the 1990s, and contained a lyrical quality as well as the more barbed concern for the plight of women, not only in Iran, but worldwide. 30 years later I became acquainted with the Persian actress Bahar Mosadeghian. At the time her head was shaved, much like the women contained in my paintings. For me, this hairstyle suggested imprisonment, or vulnerability, and the moment I met Bahar, dear Mehrangis came to my mind. By this same time the rights of women had risen to pre-eminence internationally. SŒURS SANGUINES is nonetheless not about any political or gender related concern, and it is not “about“ anything. It does however contain the poetic echo that occurs between Bahar and Mehrangis, and contains an undertow of great and dark proportions. The ball of twine goes unexplained, but the writing aggressively nailed to the wall behind is a translation of WB Yeats‘ poem “The Second Coming” into, appropriately, the Persian language. This, occurring over a sedate and conservatively mellow wallpaper. The echoes between young women; the under currents of world affairs and the unknown divine; and the ongoing mortality and tender regrets of human beings.” Edward Povey