THIS POSTER WAS THE FIRST PICTURE I had published on a serious scale and it opened the way to most things I've done since in the arts, not least the books about Big O artists published in 2014 and 2018. So its title turned out quite prophetic really, given that what I was trying to do at the time was get into the arts after having been educated as an engineer - at Imperial College in London, no less, where I had a wonderful time but also learned that what I least wanted in life was to be an engineer. It's a noble profession in itself and to this day I enjoy following developments in science and engineering and even tinkering with the motorbike; but this was a personal thing. I enjoyed engineering but not enough to spend the rest of my working life doing it as my main occupation. I was also helped by the spirit of the age of course - turn on, tune in and drop out . . .

The picture took three or four months to draw and while I was doing so I could have written a thesis about the significance of all its elements and their relationship with each other. Don't worry, I'm not going to attempt to recreate that here but it could be interesting perhaps to explore some of the thinking behind it.

The overall theme is of a union of opposites leading to the creation of a new state of consciousness. The main union is between the presiding couple with the slightly elongated arms who rise above the rest. Everything else is kind of a picture on some spiritual plane of what is happening in the early stages of this relationship, when the couple get together and feel intimations that this could be a love that lasts and grows. They could in reality be simply touching hands on a dance floor on an early date with some music playing in the background that sounds transcendant. On a spiritual level they are exploring the possibilities of their union. In this case that exploration is happening in an egg-shaped vessel drifting through a distant astral plane.

Within the vessel are two couples engaged in some mystic ceremony. At the time I read a lot of Carl Jung, who remains a hero to this day. One of his more interesting ideas was that, along with many other shadowy subconscious figures that show up in dreams and fantasies and have a real impact on daily life, each person carries an inner opposite. For most men this would be a female entity Jung called the anima (Latin for soul). For most females it is a male entity he called the animus. For gays it's more complicated but there will still be male and female strands intertwined and balancing each other out; or not, as the case may be. Jung didn't claim to have invented this concept. It was just a pattern he had spotted in mythology and his patients' dreams.

His theory was that in any couple's relationship what matters is not just that they complement each other on a conscious level - shared tastes and interests etc. - but they need also to chime on a subconscious level. Which is to say that their animus and anima must also be compatible both with each other and their conscious halves. This is an impossible ideal of course. Almost everyone is to some extent in conflict with themselves and most couples are to a degree in conflict with each other. Perfect harmony, such as pictured here, is something that comes and goes, often fleetingly. It can be a chimera - an impossible vision - but it can also be a glimpse of something perfectly attainable, if only intermittently. Probably the test of how lasting any such relationship will be is if the glimpses of harmony outweigh the inevitable clashes with reality.

Jung called such an arrangement a Quaternity, it's like the yin-yang symbol with four elements instead of two.

Within this embrace is a womb-like space where two embryos are forming that are the new selves of the couple coming together. These are not any potential earthly children they could have together in time, these are the embryos of their own future selves, the people they will become through sharing their lives and interacting in all the diifferent challenges that present themselves. Any true relationship in this ideal scenario has to be a partnering of equals. Perfect balance.

Scattered throughout the scene are balanced pairs of opposites. Most important, perhaps are the images highlighted by the presiding couple's touching hands. At the top this is a star viewed through a portal cut through the vessel's hull. This represents imagination of the kind that has always driven humanity to reach for the stars. The dangers inherent in this, as Icarus learned, are represented by the two snarling monsters flanking the portal. At the bottom the couple's hands frame an organic plant growth, star-like in form but biological in nature. The idea is that you need both. Soaring imagination is all very well but it needs to be rooted in the earth if it is to achieve real benefits.

The touching hands motif is echoed on the Quaternity's level, although here the upper pair do not highlight any particular feature but focus generally on the nose of the stylised dragon that is the portal's frame, again emphasizing the dangers of taking wild leaps into the unknown. The lower pair frame the I-Ching hexagram for T'ai Peace/Harmony. I could have put a yin-yang symbol there because it means almost the same and is more widely recognized, but this symbol just fitted better; and these days one can just Google to learn its significance. The Quaternity's other hands grasp cauldrons from which the presiding couple rise like genies from their lamps.

Scattered around the Quaternity's tiled platform are various other emblems of harmony and rebirth. The Star of David has exactly the same symbolic meaning as the I-Ching sign - an upward-tending force balanced by a downward tending one - both of which become destructive if not balanced by their opposite. The butterfly is of course a universal symbol of rebirth because of its transformation from lowly grub to winged beauty. The other two are just personal emblems that came to mind at the time.

THIS PICTURE WAS THE FIRST CHANCE I had on any scale to express my attitude to life in a symbolic, visual form. And as it happens, it's an attitude I still hold unchanged. I still believe that in any group activity each team member works best when able to take charge of their own area of expertise. Hierarchies should be flexible - a partnership of equals.

Well, that's my ideal anyway, I know it's not everyone's. Most people, in fact, seem to prefer top down hierarchies and who am I to argue? This is simply a picture of the kind of relationship I prefer and I can't help feeling that if more people shared that view, the world would be a more peaceful place - less of this endless competition to be top of the pile all the time.