When Queen Elizabeth died on the 8th September 2022, the entire world was predictably saturated with facts on all platforms about every single stage of her life, her family’s life and the institution’s role, past, present and future. To ignore it was possibly one way to get through this information bombardment. Yet, last minute, I decided to sit and watch live, the funeral ceremony on TV and produce a series of speed sketches as events unfolded. I’ve drawn from TV in the past, in particular a series of films by Spike Lee where I drew from paused selected scenes. But this time, because it was live, I knew the sketches would have to be fast and therefore would only be able to pick up on certain details. Whether anyone understood the references or not didn’t bother me. This filtering, down to a few lines and marks, of an excessively baroque event that aimed to hold us spellbound, felt appropriate.

Images 01 – 11 ‘Speed sketch by a mere mortal in front of LIVE TV 19/09/22’ 5cm x 5cm crayon on paper