In my youth my father tried, without a great deal of success, to encourage me to enjoy works of literature.   I had my own dreams and my own limited appreciation of the ways of the world. I was closed to the creative imaginations and understanding of the human psyche of Leo Tolstoy and Gustave Flaubert.

For some years now this resistance to reading literature has been ebbing away.   It's amazing to think that these books, such modest objects with their plain cloth covers, can be loaded with themes of love and hate, life and death, and fear and faith. 

The paintings and drawings were each made before I had read the book, possibly as a way of warming to it in advance.   The title 'Great Expectations' refers to my own expectations of the book as well as my fathers expectations of me.