Driving back from the South Coast a year or so ago, I heard a song on the radio that lodged itself in my brain. “Is that all there is?”, written by Lieber and Stoller, and recorded by Peggy Lee in 1969, is a wonderfully miserable lyric which has no place in a pop song.

I was doubly pleased to discover that the pop song that had no place being a pop song was based on a short story – Disillusionment by Thomas Mann - a most unlikely starting point for what was to become a number one on Billboard’s adult contemporary singles chart. Having spent many of my tortured teenage years ploughing through the collected works of Mann, the coincidence was inspired and a connection was forged.

The whole idea became something of a life lesson. You’ll know what I mean if, like me, you’re one of the glass half-empty people who understands the need, but has to work hard, to feel like one of the glass half-full people

I began making pictures that related to the song which in turn related to the story and started with a series of minimal text pieces. These were partnered with five paintings based on short quotes from Mann’s story, with the sentiment of the quote contradicted by a clumsy approximation of a Chinese symbol.

The rest of the work grew out of this, taking more of Mann’s quotes as their start points, some as variations on one sketch and some using prints of Disillusionment, where the text is shredded and randomly reassembled. I like that even here, where the narrative has disappeared, you can still sense the tone of the story and that nagging question, “Is that all there is?”