Meet The Colonel

It is not often that I acquire new objects for my collection now as I tend to reuse old ones but in a different way.

However, for  the next painting entitled ‘Forged in Life’ I needed a new companion for my puppet, Mr Turnip who I have used in several paintings to represent me or my childhood over the last fifty years or so.

Mr Turnip and his friend Colonel Beetroot appeared on the TV children’s show ‘Whirligig’ so I am going to use them both to represent a portrait of me and my brother, David in a painting about climate change.

There are only four known (very small) photos of the Colonel taken about 75 years ago, so I was absolutely delighted when Stuart of The Joy Laurey Archive took up the challenge of making a replica for me. You can see the marionette on my latest Facebook, Instagram and Bluesky posts