Alan Stones

This painting is part of an on-going series with the title 'Great Expectations'.

In my youth my father tried, without a great deal of success, to encourage me to enjoy works of literature. I had my own dreams and limited appreciation of the ways of the world. I was closed to the creative imaginations and understanding of Leo Tolstoy and Gustave Flaubert.

For some years now this resistance to reading literature has been ebbing away. It's amazing to think that these books - such modest objects with their plain cloth covers, can be loaded with themes of love and hate, fear and faith, and life and death.