Peter and Jane
The lost episodes...
an homage by Jon Bentley
y name is Jon Bentley and I am an artist working in the Mivart Artists
M
studios in Bristol. My work is figurative with a surreal narrative which tends
to leave more questions than answers. Like many people of my generation I learned to read with Peter, Jane, Mummy and Daddy, never forgetting Pat the dog. As I struggled with the unfamiliar letters my child’s eyes where inexorably drawn to the pictures on the opposite page. Paintings full of strange details that drew you in and seemed to suggest a richer more mysterious narrative than the prosaic stories and dialogue on the written page. 45 years later I am drawn back to these images by a chance encounter in a second hand bookshop. Perhaps the paintings are etched particularly deep in my subconscious by their association with learning to read, which seemed to me as Jon Bentley tel: 0117 955 9956 mob: 07780 511522 email: info@jonbentley.co.uk or Valerie Hayes tel: 01656 881 033 mob: 07969 860540 email: valerie-183@hotmail.com
a child such a miraculous act; the ability to hear stories without anyone else being present. Leafing through the old familiar pictures they began to transform in my mind’s eye, into the “lost episodes”, a deeply affectionate, slightly surreal homage to John Berry, Martin Aitchison and Harry Wingfield, of which I present here the first
www.jonbentley.co.uk Photographed by Matt Divine
few pages.
Medium: Oil & Acrylic on MDF and Hardboard with archival digital print. Dimensions 31.7cm x 23.2cm