"Wee Beasties"

This original papercut is composed from page 53 of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a passage in which one of the boys moves through the forest on the hunt.

Fragments of Golding’s text remain visible within the composition, including lines such as “the silence of the forest,” “under the darkness of the tree,” and “hurled the spear.” These phrases were deliberately preserved as part of the landscape of the work, allowing the language of the novel to inhabit the forest itself.

The structure of the woodland is based on one of my own photographs taken in a forest in Derbyshire. The branching forms of the trees were translated into the page so that the text of the novel becomes the forest canopy.

Letters removed during the cutting process were reassembled within the piece to form one of the novel’s most haunting lines:

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it’s only us.”

The composition is cut entirely from this single page.

The papercut is hand stitched onto a black background, allowing the cut page to sit slightly away from the surface. This creates depth and shadow throughout the branches of the forest.

The work is presented in a hand-finished box frame with a 20 mm space between the artwork and the glass, allowing sections of the papercut to rise from the surface and giving the piece a quiet three-dimensional presence.

This work is the only hand-cut instance of the composition, made directly from a specific page of the text.

A small studio edition may be developed from this work at a later date, derived from the original and produced through a separate, fixed process.

The framed artwork is 320mm x 230mm

The artwork itself is A4 in size (210mm x 297mm)

Presented in a hand-finished white wooden box frame with UV glass.

The artwork itself is complete and signed in the studio.

Each original work is carefully framed and prepared for shipment upon purchase.

Please allow up to 10 days for dispatch.