Title: "Seven am (Sue's Piccy)"

Time: 6 hours and 23 minutes

Date: 31/10/00 - 23/01/01

Information: This picture sums up my feelings for my job very nicely... and it probably does for most of you lads out there as well.

This is my first attempt at a picture with no borderlines. We were taught the art form early at school but who really uses it? It is so very hard to make it look as good as you want it to be and also to separate all the different pieces. The foreground is a hill that contains, in the middle, a freshly sealed grave with a tombstone that reads "7:00 AM". I am the person slumped over the tombstone but my sister Sue pointed out that the guy looks like he is wearing a suit so it could realistically portray anyone.

Where my skin should show, there are only fuzzy static lines to show that I am not quite tuned in yet to the world. The line across my face is to show either as: a heart-measurer that can be found in any hospital - it is beating to my heart showing me to still live; or as the strange fuzz that is seen on an untuned television set to show that I am not quite with it yet. With my arms set to hold an unseen guitar, maybe it is the music that keeps me going...

The tombstone leaves a shadow across the grave site but the suited person does not. Either that person is dead or is not really there. The caption at the top states "Wake me if I sleep, Bury me if I'm dead." and many a time I have felt that it would not really make a difference either way. This is why I appear here at the graveyard - to show that I might be more at home here. Some people believe that death is like an eternal sleep, just peace for evermore and this is what I really need.

For I am a night person. I go to bed at the earliest of about midnight and get up at ten minutes to seven - thus the time shown. I know some of you out there have it worse off by far but I am a guy who has had an average of twelve hours of sleep a night for most of my life. This reduction in nearly half the amount of sleep I get a night has slowed me down quite a fair bit.

Anyway, the shadows in the background are those who couldn't handle the stress and pressure and decided to take the second option rather than get out while they could. They sleep for eternity and never realise what it was that they did, never being heard of again...

This picture was a christmas present for my sister Sue who does a lot of travelling and so doesn't take a lot of things with her. After seeing my portfolio, she told me that she would love to have one and so I have dedicated this one to her. After all, she is the one who is helping me get out of this life-draining job that I am currently bogged down in. She is basically rescuing me from death itself to take me where life certainly has a very different meaning – San Fransisco, America...

Seeya round lads...