Bonnie Hawkins’s drawings for Under Milk Wood<\/p>\n
Dylan Thomas’s ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood has attracted artists in many different media since it was first broadcast in February 1954, just months after his tragic death in New York at the age of 39. The responses include a jazz suite by Stan Tracy, collages by Peter Blake and an opera by John Metcalf, while film, cartoon, television and theatre versions abound. A series of short radio pieces by six Welsh authors, commissioned by the BBC to mark its seventieth anniversary this year, testified to its continuing appeal as a creative catalyst.<\/p>\n
Bonnie Hawkins’s varied and beautiful drawings of the dramatis personae of Under Milk Wood therefore join a long line of artistic interactions with the play, and it should be said at the outset that they are as original and striking as any of their predecessors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pencil is the most egalitarian of all artistic tools, almost all of us have access to a humble, inexpensive pencil, it\u2019s what we start with as children. By drawings all of these images by hand, I\u2019m hoping to show other aspiring artists that you don\u2019t need expensive software to create art. Wherever possible I\u2019m using real people as models, family and friends are being asked to pose usually without knowing why or what for. I\u2019m hoping the people in my drawings will encompass all age ranges, body shape and type – art is not just about the young and beautiful. Instead, Thomas has presented me with a whole village of different characters I need to capture, some of them will be beautiful, some are grotesque.\u201d<\/p>\n
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