Reclining Artist

This is me, both as artist and model in my studio. I wanted to make something in the tradition of the reclining nude. I'm hoping it will be popular with educated middle-class people who might enjoy spotting the art-historical references within it. Reclining Artist is both an idealised fantasy and also the messy reality. It is perhaps me expressing my desire to be a sex object and also show off my cultural capital and boyish paraphernalia. The sofa is draped in a test piece of my 2011 tapestry Map of Truths and Beliefs. Alan Measles, my teddy bear and metaphor for masculinity and god, appears as a sculpture, as an inflatable and on a dress hanging on the wall. The cat is called Kevin' (Grayson Perry).

Etching in colours, 2017, on wove paper, signed by the artist and numbered on the reverse from the edition of 58, published by Paragon Press, London, 70.3 x 102.7 cm. (27.7 x 40.4 in.)