Impossible City 1

As is often the case with me, the whole of my Impossible Cities sequence began with a small, almost abstract, graphic goal - to explore the potential of half-drop wallpaper patterns to suggest a space larger than the repeating element - that rapidly became populated by my particular obsessions and digressions until they threatened to overwhelm the original intent.

What had been intended as an afternoon’s distraction snowballed into a sprawling drawing project pursued in brief bursts between other commitments over many months.

A world where the horizontal plane of the ground and the vertical framework of inhabited structures are always converging but can never meet, no matter how many times the pattern is repeated.

The anti-urban / supra-urban technological fantasies of the past century - Broadacre City / Epcot / Neom - elevated literally and figuratively to a new level.

A place where I am a benevolent tech god whose every ridiculous whim is made real - exemplified by the aerial golf course, suspended from actual sky-hooks, dangled beneath giant blimps that, just because I could, are emblazoned with my imaginary corporate logo, the winged ’D’, and decorated with the patterns from my socks. It is both a half-affectionate repudiation of blind optimism in technology as a solution for the world’s troubles, and a fantasy of godlike power for me - escaping an embattled profession, challenged by his disobedient body and brain, but still able to dream big…

But there is also still room for something smaller and more human here, clinging on (look out for the allotments…)