Giclée print for Summer Show: The Return Of The Native

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. EXHIBIT 280 AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY. 

This is an updated introduction, and I'm really happy to say that the Royal Academy has been by far the most effective selling space any work of mine has ever occupied. I must do it again, if they'll have me.
It's in Room 1 – the print room – high up and out of the way so you can marvel at Tracey's calligraphy and Humphrey Ocean's little dog etching, but just visible enough to make out the subject. Also, I've had emails from satisfied customers telling me of their connections with the liner, or various officers. Someone was once a neighbour of Roger de Grey, the last captain of the Royal Academy; under whose stern eye my big painting of the Modern Jazz Quartet, The Ministry of Jazz, failed to get sea room in this illustrious people's palace. But times change.

You might have read this before. It hasn't...

This is one of my first memories brought to life. They're gone forever now, the giant, heavy ships built with a billion rivets and stuffed with the posh pamperatti of the day, ploughing the Atlantic between the wars. Cruise liners today aren't the same;  they aren't built to take a sea;  the Queens and the Normandie were over-specified in every way; they were solid sea-going hotels where half the crew would labour by firelight below the waterline to keep those huge propellers churning at full speed for three thousand miles of deep water.