The Pegasus Papers 

The Wallpaper Designs in Detail

Pegasus in Africa

Like all the designs in the series, Pegasus in Africa features new interpretations of images from the The Masque of Blackness Reimagined (2018). Here, these include Pegasus, the mythological winged horse, a dancer called Oya, seen as the goddess of the River Niger, the giant scallop shell in which she travels, Hermes, the time traveling grey seal, and the anonymous narrator from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Palm trees place the narrative in Africa.

In one scene, Pegasus is depicted flying over a waterfall, while in another he is rearing by the sea. The idea is that he is flying to the source of the River Niger to help heal the vast area of West African land through which it flows. As in my animations, Hermes has the role of guiding and protecting the other images. The dancer appears joyful and free on the beach, symbolising that all is well.

The Carousel and The Moon

The central motif of The Carousel and The Moon is a carousel with eight white horses. It appears five times in the design, including depictions by the Niger, Rhine and Thames. This device links these three great rivers together. Pegasus, whose relationship to the horses on the carousels is obvious, is shown standing alert by the Rhine in Northern Germany. The Moon in different phases presides over the scenes, accompanied by Venus – the Roman goddess of love - in her guise as the evening star.  

The numbers of carousels (five) and horses (eight) have not been chosen at random. In music, the interval spanning five notes in a diatonic scale is known as a ‘perfect fifth’ and considered particularly harmonious. If you play eight consecutive notes on a piano, going up a semitone every time, the gap between the first and the last is a perfect fifth. Meanwhile, in astronomy, the numbers five and eight recur repeatedly in the relationships between the Earth, Venus and the Sun. For example, it takes eight years for Venus to return to the same place in the terrestrial sky. During that period, the Earth and the Sun line up in the same relative positions five times. If their movements over the eight years from an Earthly perspective are plotted on a graph, they form a five-pointed star.

Hermes’s River Journey

Hermes appeared in both The Masque of Blackness Reimagined (2018) and The Marriage of The Thames and The Rhine (2010). Here, the grey seal’s journey starts in Gravesend by the Thames Estuary and progresses, via the mangrove-lined banks of the Niger Delta, to a meeting with Pegasus at the source of the River Niger. This scene is reimagining of the voyage up an African river in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but here the central character is not on the trail of evil and corruption. Instead, Hermes, who guides and protects, is searching for the goodness, wisdom and justice represented by Pegasus, who is seen emerging from the jungle. This symbolises his quiet, hidden nature.

The Theatre and the Thames

This design, which is the culmination of The Pegasus Papers and the final wallpaper in the series, shows the winged horse flying towards London and soaring over the Queen’s House in Greenwich. This was built by Inigo Jones, who designed the stage sets for the original The Masque of Blackness in 1605. The Theatre and the Thames also features the Nellie, the yawl (small boat) on board which Heart of Darkness begins. The Nellie is shown from several different angles, in one scene encountering Pegasus and Oya in her shell. Elsewhere, the anonymous narrator, who appeared in The Masque of Blackness Reimagined (2018) standing on the helm of the Nellie looking out to sea, is shown greeting Hermes as his head emerges from the waters of the Thames. Is this the final scene of The Pegasus Papers, or is that the couple – Oya and an unidentified male figure – dancing on the stage in the centre of the design?

My hope is that the four wallpaper designs will delight the viewer while creating environments of peace and calm.

Text edited by Johnny Acton