"Cup of Tree" What were you thinking?

These are three linocuts I have just finished for an exhhibition at Newman College.
Well obviously “Cup of Tree” is the linocut on the bottom left. Its one of those pieces that intrigues people. Those of you who know my work will know I often make images to do with growth and change although I hate that phrase. I am an artist not a writer and sometimes when I talk about my work I resort to cliche’s and I don’t think it really does the artwork justice. I am also interested in the internal and external worlds that people inhabit and the real and the imagined.
In this image the juxtaposition of the ordinary (What could be more ordinary than a cup of tea?) and the extraordinary (Tree growing out of said cup.) Is designed to make the viewer stop and think, to wonder.
The trees out of the window offer a clue, they have no leaves, I think of them as being deciduous, kind of in a state of hibernation a state of consolidation. The contrast of the leafy sapling growing out of the cup reminds us that growth happens in the most ordinary and unlikely of circumstances.  It is not always the big events that change peoples lives…. sometimes its the small things, the quiet consolidation, the contemplation over a cup of tea. The penny drops. Ordinary lives can still be wonderful.