The Fools' Mirror - Two original oil paintings

Two fools face each other from inside their picture frames, one steps off the edge of the world into some unknown beginning with his worldly belongings over his shoulder, the other gurns ludicrously and crushes a crown underfoot, an owl sitting atop him. Each holds a mirror up to the other, and we can see the brother-fool's face reflected in each glass, but if we look closer we see in fact that the reflections look back out at us, the observer.

In these two paintings, exhibited as part of the FOOLS II exhibition at the Manger Gallery in Derbyshire, I have scattered a number of ideas and influences - they are medieval jokers, they are marginal folk who unnerve with humour, they are truthtellers, and status-quo-upturners, there is a hint of medieval German mischief-maker Till Eulenspiegel, who also carried an owl of wisdom and a mirror, there is the Fool at the beginning of the tarot, opening a new chapter with a bold blank page beyond the edge of things. I liked the fact that they play with the space beyond the picture frames by being aware of the other, and of us looking on. My hope was that this asks questions about where wisdom comes from, about how art can be sentient, and about what is reflected back to us when we look into the mirror held by the ones at the edge of the village - the wise outcasts. There's a chequerboard behind it all, to place us in a universe of yin-yang where check-mate can be called at any moment.

Oils on board, with gilded wooden frames