ESSEX GIRLS - TREE OF LIFE - 2021

'This print was created for the 'Flora and Fauna' Art Car Boot Fair 2021 over lockdown. This design was originally used for one of the "Staying Alive" neon art pieces Furr created with the neon artist Chris Bracey in 2013.

'Tree of Life' was originally inspired by a Jacobean tree of life motif crewel work that Furr owns.

The tapestries with this motif often feature symbols of fertility with brightly coloured fruit, flowers and birds. Furr mixes genres and time periods by using kitsch paintings of women by JHLynch and Tretchikoff for the fruit on the tree.

"Chris Bracey originally came up with the 'Essex girls' part of the title because when I showed him the design he said that the women featured in the coloured circles reminded him 'Essex girls' now the look is probably more reminsicent of 'Love Island'." - Christian Furr

There is further mystery in the use of portraits of women. J H Lynch was a mid mod artist who left nothing but his paintings and his signature works, prints of which were sold worldwide by the millions, but mystery surrounds him. Some of the paintings of women featured here appear in Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Clockwork Orange’. '