Great Expectations No. 15 ‘There are no walls or fences. My garden's boundaries are the horizon.'

For Derek Jarman (Dungeness)

Framed Photo, Sea Holly, Rosemary, Violets, Purple Sage, Chalk, Shingle, Shells 

2024 

Derek Jarman (31 January 1942 – 19 February 1994) was an English artist, film maker, costume designer, stage designer, writer, gardener, and gay rights activist.

Derek Jarman acquired Prospect Cottage, a fisherman’s shack on the shingle at Dungeness near the nuclear power station,  when he came across the building with a ‘For Sale’ sign while filming on the beach with Tilda Swinton. Having been diagnosed with HIV on 22 December 1986, Jarman had resolved ‘to get as much out of life as possible’ and started creating a garden.

In Chroma, written a year before his death, and as his eyesight was failing. Jarman explored the uses of colour. Shifting across the spectrum and spanning references from the medieval to the modern, he drew on the work of great colour theorists from Pliny to Leonardo. Interwoven with these musings were evocative memories from Jarman's childhood and illustrious career, along with reflections on his deteriorating health.

It was described as “A paean from an artist seeking to memorialise the extraordinary power of colour even while it receded from his own life.”

He is buried in the graveyard at St Clement’s Church, Old Romney, Kent.