From the first moment one encounters Cyclops at St Paul’s, it is clear that this is no ordinary rendering of a London landmark. Here, in stark monochrome, artist and printmaker Trafford Parsons has summoned something at once ancient and dreadfully modern: a creature of myth wandering the heart of a nation’s faith and power.
The composition is both simple and arresting, St Paul’s Cathedral, rendered with architectural fidelity and restraint, becomes the stage upon which the uncanny presence of a cyclops lingers. Towering, singular-eyed, and unmistakably alone. It is a figure from Homer’s world, but its placement here, among the domes and spires of Wren’s London — is a quiet act of defiance.
Trafford Parsons, known for his streetwise intelligence and iconoclastic wit, does not offer easy answers. The cyclops is not here to destroy. Nor does it rage. It watches. It occupies. It sees us, and it makes us look again at something we thought we understood.
The choice of monochrome heightens the atmosphere: this is a dream etched in ash and fog, somewhere between protest and parable. The grain of the etching paper captures the tactile tension of screen print ink layered thick in some parts, ghostly thin in others. It’s not decoration. It’s document.
Like much of Trafford Parsons’ work, this print carries a quiet politics. Is the cyclops a foreign invader, or a reflection of our own monstrous surveillance state? Is this post-Blitz London, scarred and watchful? Or the post-truth present, where myth and modernity blur and no one is quite sure who’s looking?
What is clear is that this piece demands attention and rewards it. There is satire here, certainly, but also a remarkable compositional seriousness. One cannot help but recall the likes of Nash or Sutherland, though here updated for the era of CCTV, lost empires, and city streets that watch you back.
For all its formal restraint, Cyclops at St Paul’s is, at its heart, a deeply British work not in the nostalgic sense, but in the way that only an island of contradictions can be: classical and punk, reverent and rebellious.
It stands as a reminder that in the hands of the right artist, the print is not just reproduction it is revelation.
Limited edition 100
Hand Finished Silkscreen Print.
Printed on Fabriano Rosaspina Paper, an excellent quality paper made from 60% cotton.
50cm X 70cm
The prints are all hand pulled silk screen prints with painted details, so each one has its own individual eccentricities that are intrinsic to this process.
LIMITED EDITION of 100 prints, numbered & signed by Trafford Parsons.
All prints are sent out “Signed For”, within 7 working days.
