Before his painted and stained glass ‘Spitfires’, Brian Clarke explored the subject of the fighter plane in a series of drawings on paper from 2010 to 2013.

In Brian Clarke: Spitfires (2020): Clarke describes these works:

‘My first Spitfires experiments began as white outline drawings that expectorate in urgent and unruly contempt for order, lines shooting off from propellers and fins like electronic orgasms. The Spitfire form lends the line authority and purpose, while the line frees the Spitfire from the conventions of narrative, transcending orthodox interpretation as it becomes ornament. When the shape is repeated at regular intervals it generated a wholly heraldic pattern that yet, somehow, manages to hold on to the deep throaty growl of history.’