This piece has been absolutely brilliant to work on, excuse the pun but I have toyed with putting my stamp on the ‘Masters Of The Universe’ for a good while now and the recent move to include characters within my pieces (more on the rationale behind that to follow in 2020) provided the perfect platform for me to do something special and do justice to such an iconic and much-loved story. My aspiration is to fuel one’s imagination through the images that I create, to amplify the qualities and to stir the senses and to take you back to a period that is so special for so many and for some many reasons. It is this ability that I have built a reputation for that I have wanted to exploit in this collection and if by adding characters within the scene takes the piece to another level then why not. What I am conveying through this piece is how we saw things as a child playing with these toys, where we truly used our imagination to play. We may have been setting He-Man and his companions out on the shag pile carpet or on the kitchen table but in our head we were in Eternia and we weren’t leaving until it was time for dinner! I wish I had my toys still but I, along with my Brothers and Sister played the hell out of them so they ended up in the ‘Sandy Sunshine playgroup’ jumble stall. A low point was playing with the Sorceress (ooh err) on De-Panne beach and being called back for a ride on the go-carts and forgetting the winged beauty only to return to see the tide take her away. MERDE! Castle Grayskull was one of the best, if not the best toys I owned, damn it brings it all back just thinking about it! This piece was always going to focus on it, with the aim of building a magical landscape that I have done so many times throughout my ‘Storyteller’ works but then take it to a different direction by showing what I so often eluded to, yet maintaining integrity and not buggering about with them and making them into something that they weren’t and instead making them come to life, to be less plastic. Through my signature lighting style and the magical detailing that I inject, these iconic action figures are hopefully as you pictured them. Anyone else have a possessed Ram Man? Mine seemed to always aim his leap straight into my bloody Nesquik! This collection was always intended to be fun, to feel great looking back with the aim to look forward and I have done exactly that. It has been great fun, this piece especially as it was the first one where I moved into something completely different and I have every intention of building on that in future works. ‘Hadouken’ (Streetfighter 2) is a further example on how this has worked so well – so this is just Round One! Look within ‘The Memory Remains 2’ toyshop for a clue as to what could follow up ‘I Have The Power’ next year.
