This is the book that Ladybird forbade me to publish when I sent them the first twelve pages in 2012. I went on to make twenty paintings featuring the surreal adventures of Peter and Jane, calling the series The Lost Episodes.The paintings were exhibited in the form of an open book. They featured at Bristol University (2011) and The Threadneedle Prize at The Mall Gallery in 2012, 2013 and 2016. Many are now in private collections. The BBC spent an afternoon filming in my studio for a programme celebrating a hundred years of Ladybird books, the footage was subsequently edited out at the behest of Ladybird/Penguin.
This hardback edition in a slightly larger format than the original Ladybird books contains all 20 paintings. It doesn’t strive to compete with the one liners of Penguin’s ubiquitous self satirical series or the post modernist shock value of Miriam Elia’s versions, but rather tries to retain something of the innocence of the originals albeit with a surreal and unpredictable narrative. It is above all a labour of love.
