Blake combines sources from celebrity photographs, popular media, and personal imagery in his stylized, witty works, to produce his own unique twist on conventional portraiture. The inspiration for this drawing came from a personal source, imaginary childhood friends of Blake’s sister-in-law April Wilson: Pipalo and Star King. The central protagonist of this composition has a faraway look, as the figures move around her, seamlessly merging with the furnishings of this everyday domestic scene. (Select Views: Drawings from the Benesch Collection, BMA, 2006) Peter Blake is best known for his collaged constructions, which earned him the title “Grand Old Man of English Pop” in the early 1960s. By 1963, he had turned away from fame and escaped to the country outside of London. While striving to live a self-sufficient existence, Blake took up more personal subject matter in his art. Here, his depiction of a girl surrounded by the fleeting visions of youth still carries the constructed aesthetic of his earlier collages, but with an intimacy of subject and faint rendering of a passing memory. The main figure is Blake’s sister-in-law, and the other two are her imaginary friends, Pipalo and Star King. These three personify the artist’s interest in innocent, naïve, and straightforward subjects. Perhaps his exploration of nostalgia and childhood fantasies can be explained by the loss of a good part of his London childhood to World War II. [On Paper: Figure Drawings from the Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection, April 20 - September 14, 2014]