Martyn Bedford: Influences

The Undercover team asked Martyn Bedford what  influenced him when writing FLIP, and he mentioned M.C. Escher, one of the world's best known graphic artists. Escher is best known for his so-called impossible structures, but he made made 448 lithographs, woodcuts and wood engravings and over 2000 drawings and sketches during his lifetime. You can check out some of his work over at the official M.C.Escher site

This is how M.C. Escher influenced Martyn Bedford:

Since I first came across M.C. Escher’s work, I’ve been a fan. I love the way his optical illusions draw you in, making you see the picture first one way then another, until the layers of sense and interpretation pile up.

One of my favourites is “Hand with Globe”, in which a bearded man with an intense expression is gazing at his reflection in a glass sphere. We see the hand holding the sphere but otherwise everything else in the picture is contained in the surface of the glass and, as a result, appears to be trapped inside.

There’s the man, of course, as well as the room he’s sitting in, with its chairs and bookshelves, but everything is distorted by the fish-eye curvature of the glass so that, in fact, the picture takes on the appearance of a surrealist work. I had a post-card sized print of this picture on my wall for years and, later, on my writing desk.

It chimes with one of the ideas I wanted to explore in FLIP – this notion that if we look at (or inside) ourselves closely enough, we begin to see ourselves differently. Who are we, really?  Are we actually more interesting, more complex, more strange than we – and others – assume? Are we forced by the conventions of society to present a false image to the world which distorts the “true” us trapped inside?

Similarly, “Drawing Hands”, another of Escher’s better known works, has long been a favourite. Two hands in the final stages of sketching one another, each hand simultaneously creating the hand which creates it . . . it’s a wonderfully impossible puzzle. And if we assume they are the right and left hands of the same artist then it has something to say, too, about the interplay and interdependence of the right and left sides of the brain in creating works of art. This interests me very much as a writer.

In relation to FLIP, the image informs another of the novel’s themes, as Alex’s mind and Philip’s body become increasingly intertwined until it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. Is this hybrid Alex-Flip actually two separate boys or are the two slowly merging into one and, if so, how can Alex ever break free?

You can watch the trailer for FLIP below:

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