During his life as a painter and an illustrator Paul Nash was frequently reminded of a recurring dreamlike desire for flight. In his wonderful short memoir Aerial Flowers, produced as a limited edition in 1947, Nash discusses his desire “in common with many other human creatures, I have always been more or less attracted to the idea of being able to fly” (2). He never simply attributes this to a desire to be airborne merely, but to have the freedom to fly at one’s own volition. The desire was never an obsession as such, but early drawings record the act, including creatures invented that were capable of the flight he imagined and dreamt for himself. During the war he drew shocking depictions of No Man’s Land, and during these studies he made tentative experiments in abstraction:

     I began, for instance, to explore in depth by new methods to re-value colour relationships and practise with more subtlety the acute problems of poise. I realize now that these were actually my first attempts to fly. (5)