I chose the cover image because the horse to me represents civilisation. A horse can be very architectural. Without horses, cities couldn’t be built in ancient civilisations. And of course, most of all, the Trojan Horse. The horse on the cover appears out of what could be seen as smoke after a fire…perhaps after the battle.

Some of the stories are so breathtakingly beautiful the images poured out and the only question was how to limit myself and decide which were vital to the story. ‘Corruption’ was the first story. The hero trapped on an island with only his falcon companion, which represented freedom and his rotting foot. This is where the idea came to me of looking at iconic religious painting where the head is tilted. I wanted these images to have the meaningful and layered appearance of a religious icon. Hence you will see in many of the stories the heads of the characters lean to one side in an exaggerated style, which is highly visible in the woman and child in ‘Lady Macbeth of Tamarama Bay’, as well as other stories in the book.

I looked at artists such as Picasso and Rouault, as well as years of studying what makes an image memorable and powerful. In addition, I poured over my books on Ancient Greek myth, as well as sketching the Greek and Roman artefacts in the New York Metropolitan Museum. I feel that this body of work is a combination of everything I have learnt in over thirty years of making art, and that I needed that experience to be able to do justice to such powerful words.

The myth of Icarus and the story of the Minotaur was one story I couldn’t wait to get my hands on. How wonderful to depict this story so well-known yet told in a such a new and beautiful way. As an artist I salivated at the idea of drawing the wings of Icarus falling from the sky. To get my teeth into sketching how to make him fall dramatically, I hired a model to pose upside down, leaning against a wall to appear to be falling. And later, with the model posed to appear squashed and broken. I used feathers I have collected over the years as inspiration, along with looking at dead birds and classical renderings by Michelangelo and others of falling men. Also, the prospect of creating my own version of the Minotaur after years of looking at Picasso was at once daunting and inspiring. I made many different versions and I’m proud of the one I have come up with. I hope that it has its own style born from me and the words of John. (Oh, and the wooden cow in this story was a gift to me from the writer. I loved making her using drypoint to depict the hard nails hammered into slates of wood to create a visual effect filled with deep scratched marks whilst remaining somehow light in quality. The cow almost seems like the posters you might find in an old butcher shop showing the prime cutlets on the beast. With this story I went away for a couple of days to Daylesford and spent countless hours making the sketches in my hotel room. By the end of it, the room was filled with drawings covering the bed and the floor, and I went back home ready to turn those sketches into drypoints for the book.)

Throughout the image making I would look for potential characters to use in the book. I also used some of the images I had made previous to the book coming into existence. I would draw the same poses over and over. For instance, in ‘Corruption’ one of the characters listens whilst hiding. I photographed a friend posing with his hand near his ear. I kept refining it, drawing it in ink, charcoal and then finally with drypoint, until it looked just right, with a balance of light and dark, whilst keeping a stark and graphic quality which I think works well with John’s writing. I found myself being innovative too, exploring new methods I had not used before such as collagraphs. This is visible in the image of cracks in a wall in ‘Knots’, where I used an old book cover that I painted glue over and then scratched and ripped away to create the appearance of cracks. They are really cracks in a way, just like the leaves in the Icarus story are real leaves I pasted onto cardboard and printed over. Something about the materials being the real thing they are depicting is very appealing and new for me.

Images such as Electra cutting her hair on the grave in ‘Knots’ needed great thought and many reworkings to get exactly right. The words pushed me to create imagery that I would otherwise never make. Sometimes the characters in the stories turn wild, hissing like cats or howling like wolves. Oh, what fun and joy it was creating those, pushing my model, who wore various wigs and outfits, to crawl around the floor and rise like a madwoman, hissing and howling in the studio. I would often try to feel what the characters are feeling, so the stories needed me to stay away for a while to fully absorb the nature of each character and what the images should convey.

Showing time going backwards in ‘Riddle’ was an incredible challenge. I loved making the clocks seem warped and mangled, and drawing the woman walking like a ghost. Men and women falling on swords was another beautiful challenge. Once again, my model posed, faking her death over and over in various configurations to help me depict the scene realistically and dramatically.

The challenge was to be creative whilst imagining everything to be true. I was glad to draw a dragon. That was a terrific experience, as who wouldn’t want to draw a dragon? So much fun, and the creature lends itself well to the medium of drypoint with its scales and claws.

I myself posed for some of the images as reference too, such as in ‘Lady Macbeth of Tamarama Bay’, where the couple are mourning at the grave. The fortune teller too was a great one to draw. I had my model wear a crazy wig and black long-sleeved top, and I drew countless versions to get to the one I selected that best showed the mood and character required from the text.

Marionettes and puppets appear a few times in the book. I loved looking at classical ceramic versions, as well as my own wooden art version as inspiration. The stories also mention vultures and wolves devouring bodies. This was again something I would not normally draw, so it allowed me to push myself further in the scope of my image making. I must say I also found it exciting, rewarding, and just plain fun to draw some bloodthirsty and dramatic scenes.

In addition to all the images for the book, the words have inspired many assemblages of men riding horses and metal Spartans made from found metal discards from my local railway line. The idea of old welded found metal artefacts lends itself well to the stories and again gave birth to new image-making approaches for me

This exhibition and book have been years in the making. It seems as if John’s stories and my ideas have lived in my mind for an age. I feel like Zeus giving birth to Athena: the images have now sprung to life from the fertile world of John’s words into my world of image making. I think that Tales from the Greek is something of a Magnus Opus for me personally. I hope readers find inspiration to delve further into the richness of Greek mythology.

Marco Luccio