Failed Seriousness and a Subject Worth Fighting For: Representing Sir Gawain

Gawain is the subject of many scholarly papers that analyze the figure in relation to issues such as chivalry, masculinity and the development of the Arthurian mythos. That scholarly emphasis has formed a more recent engagement for me with medieval studies and with Gawain’s relevance to a broad audience, informing appropriately a recent publication that deals with visual responses to the poem. However, the figure of Gawain, specifically the Gawain of the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, along with the titular monster, had already had a profound and lasting affect on me during a formative period, returning to me, initially, as a subject explored in my art practice. That encounter in childhood was one of confusion and disappointment, a memorable and subsequently influential nonplussed experience. The narrative of the poem had disappointed my then naïve desire for heroic cliches but as a result I have come to understand the ambiguity of the poem’s themes, and the ambivalence of its figures and landscapes was the reason for its greater impact. I have represented the knight directly in four paintings, in a sculpture, and his presence as a proxy for the viewer is implicated in two large landscapes, in this paper I will discus those works and the approaches to representation I have used in trying to understand Gawain and his symbolic significance.

The painting 'Gawain Between Two Deaths' was painted for the seminar between December 2024 and January 2025.