This is a work I did when I was just 19 or 20 years old . It is about indecision. At key times in life we come  to crossroads and have to make decisions we know will affect the rest of our lives. This is particularly true at high school age when students are making decisions about what career they will follow and this makes hard choices necessary. I had to choose between art and science . I was equally good at both but the school system made me make this choice. My nephew, Saul, is a very successful scientist and inventor and when he was at school he made the opposite choice to me. My sister , his mother is an artist and his father is an engineer. He chose to go the way of his father. My father was an administrator and mother an artist and I went the way of my mother. I often wonder if I would have contributed more if I had chosen science or law instead of art. ‘Indecision’ is about the terrible inner struggle that goes on before the big life changing decision is made. I did this work on my way back from New York. I had some disturbing but powerful dreams about turning into an insect. This was a time when I had gone to the US after my first year at Sydney University. On my way back to Australia I had to choose whether to go back to University and finish my Arts Degree or leave and be a full time artist. I chose the artist road and created the Yellow House with Martin Sharp and Bret Whitley. This was a tough time for me as I had no money and no guarantee of sales or work. Choosing art was a tough decision to make. I will never know if it was the right or wrong one. I may have read Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. This is a short story you should be read and related back to the work. It is very famous and should be easy to find in the library or on the internet. It is too long ago for me to remember if I read the story before or after doing this series of etchings. I do know, however, that it definitely came from a series of my own dreams and not the story. This work is one of 24 etchings in an etching suite – there are several in the series with the image of the insect. The decapitated head is mine. It was taken from a photo I had made for my taxi license. I had to get my long hair cut short to be able to get a job as a taxi driver. I often used white face make up and clown lipstick when I was doing my puppet shows. This is my puppeteer face. This work is separated by over 40 years from my recent documentary film ‘Miscreants of Taliwood’. There is a decapitation in the documentary and the image of decapitation has persisted in my art. Decapitation imagery is part of a long tradition in art depicting the decapitation of John the Baptist. I was well aware of the John the Baptist connection when making this work. Knowing this work from my youth is being studied has made me go back and look at it again. It is a great feeling to know something created so early in my career can stand on its own feet and have a voice. I think I discovered who I was when making the Hotel Kennedy suite. The drawings for it were all made in my travelling diaries. I have kept picture diaries like these all my life. They are like the visual diaries Art Students are encouraged to use. While making the etchings I went from a minimalist abstract artist to a figurative artist. My style was formed in these etching plates and has changed little since. This is still the way I draw and depict the world. Many writers talk about the ugliness and darkness of my drawings and prints. I belong to a tradition of graphic artists from Durer (see Night Death and the Devil) to the expressionists George Groz and Otto Dix who used a ‘dark line’ to depict what it is to be human. This is very different to the ‘light line’ of artists like Henry Matisse. This dark line seems to be in the genes and can be found in the work of my daughter Naomi Gittoes. I recommend anyone wanting to understand this work in depth look at the website of my daughter, Naomi. (Naomi Gittoes.Com). Naomi has the same dark line, it seems to be inherited rather than learnt. I suggest anyone writing about this work research what etchings are and how they are made on copper or zinc plates with acid. Many students think this is a painting or drawing – it is not. I made these plates at my sister Pam’s print workshop at Bardwell Park. I still make etchings with me sister.