Over the last few years I have twice gone out to paint on The Israeli/Palestinian Separation wall (built in 2005).
It has been fascinating to create such large scale images in response to this society's situation and to paint onto a giant canvas with such political weighting. Today there is a great wealth of art work and graffiti along sections of this wall, but when I first went out in 2008 it was mainly a vast expanse of oppressive grey concrete interjected with the odd Banksy and group charity project. The local community is a generous friendly family of people that are separated and over shadowed by this barrier and their political troubles. Painting these pieces was never straight forward, with simple practicalities of getting there, not having a tall enough ladder and sourcing paint all becoming challenging events. But my main and often entertaining memories came from never getting a moments peace; from bored school kids hanging out, to the local Palestinian TV filming that evening’s news report, and becoming a tourist attraction for passing coaches of Christian holiday groups!
Here you can see some footage of what I got up to and the final paintings on the wall. |
