This series of twenty large imaginary portrait drawings were the main works which occupied my time in Cambridge during 1981; the series was started in January and completed in November.

In London I always preferred to work where I lived, often taking my inspiration from the immediate urban environment which surrounded me; whereas in Cambridge I walked to the studio and started art for the day, and could see nothing out of the windows except the tops of the trees and the sky. The '120 DAYS' pictures reflect that change of environment. 'l2O DAYS' indicates the number of working days I allocated to work on the series during 1981, but is also a passing reference to De Sade. Unlike his monstrous work, the characters I invented are dramatis personae without the narrative drama, but like the Marquis' they are stylised actors and actresses in a diary of isolation.

They were my Cambridge family, always waiting faithfully for me when I arrived each morning; I nodded to them in greeting when I entered the studio; and when I sat in the middle of the silent room their huge faces, half-smiling gazed impassively back at me from the four walls, whispering in unison: 'Keep things as they are'.

Constant change, destruction and re-working were integral parts of the working process. Chance, accident, the use of unusual combinations of materials, the rejection of source reference material, and above all my implicit trust in intuition and free imagination were inseparable from the ideas behind the pictures. These ideas are ambiguous and open to various interpretations by the viewer.

Ian Breakwell
1982