‘Arts and Morals: Iris Murdoch's Fictional World’ by Chinese scholar Professor He Weiwen is a literary study analyzing the intersection of aesthetics and ethics in the work of British novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch. The book incorporates original drawings by British artist and professor Kevin Petrie. The images are designed to visually capture the complex psychological and ethical concepts found in Murdoch's writing to bridge the gap between Murdoch's textual narratives and visual artistic expression.

Notes on the artworks (from the book)
This book contains drawings by British artist Kevin Petrie who has been researching how the writing of Iris Murdoch might inspire creative practice. Petrie’s previous practice focused on drawing from life and often in the landscape. This recording of experience through looking and drawing might be seen as a form of ‘attention’. Recently, Petrie has shifted away from observational art to more imaginative approaches. Reading Iris Murdoch has offered him a new kind of ‘landscape’ to explore through the making of images. These images are not illustrations for this book but independent works of art that are included here to complement the text. The images are accompanied by extended captions that explain the origins and possible meanings of the works.

Chapter I: About Murdoch's philosophical ideas related to art and morals, no specific book analysed.

'In the Nightjar Alley'
Kevin Petrie
2023
Ink on paper
21×29.7cm
Photo: David Williams

This drawing references the scene in 'The Bell' where Michael and Toby take a night-time walk to see nightjars in the woods. A few days before this, middle-aged Michael spontaneously kissed 18-year-old Toby. This plunged Toby (and Michael) into a period of confusion. Michael initiates the evening excursion in the hope of discussing and resolving the situation. The drawing depicts the moment of ‘resolution’ in full moonlight surrounded by nightjars. This scene struck Petrie as important and he made the picture quite intuitively without too much thought about its meaning.

After making the drawing Petrie re-listened to a couple of the Iris Murdoch Society podcasts and some aspects stood out to him and made him think again about the picture. In the episode on ‘Childhood and Adolescents’ Professor Anne Rowe discusses Toby and Michael as a depiction of what she calls a ‘perfect example of Murdochian unselfing’. Toby’s thought processes move from confusion, and thinking about the effect of the kiss on him, to acceptance, and thinking more about Michael. He does this to the point that he becomes ‘curiously protective of Michael’. In another episode on 'The Bell' Frances White makes the point that the character of Michael can be seen in different lights. One reading is that he is a potential threat to young boys and men and is likely to continue a pattern of inappropriate behaviour beyond the end of the novel. Reconsidering the drawing, one might feel the resolution can be seen in the two moonlit figures, but the surrounding darker flurry of agitated birds might be portentous of a less resolved future.

Chapter II: About the enchantment or fantasy people are usually under
1. 'The Flight from Enchanter'
2. 'The Unicorn'
3. 'The Time of the Angels'

'The Unicorn'
Kevin Petrie
2023
Ink on paper
21×29.7cm
Photo: David Williams

Kevin Petrie has made a number of images of dreaming figures combined with other scenes. Two of these kinds of images are featured in this book. Here is a sleeping women at the bottom of this artwork, with a scene above inspired by the passage in 'The Unicorn' where Hannah Crean-Smith walks out of her bedroom and past the ‘enchanted’ young Jamesie (the house keeper’s son) in the direction of the cliffs where she commits suicide. The combination creates an enchanting Gothic dreamlike scene.

Chapter III: About the importance of attention one pays to the outside world:
4. 'Under the Net'
5. 'The Severed Head'
6. 'The Black Prince'

'Smell the Trees'
Kevin Petrie
2023
Ink on paper
21×29.7cm
Photo: David Williams

The idea of paying attention is starting to seep into a number of Kevin Petrie’s pieces. For example, the drawing 'Smell the trees' focuses on using particular senses to experience our environment. In this case smell.

Chapter IV: About the Good
7. 'The Sandcastle'
8. 'The Nice and the Good'
9. 'A Fairly Honourable Defeat'

'Fellow Travellers'
Kevin Petrie
2023
Ink on paper
21×29.7cm
Photo: David Williams

'Fellow Travellers' features three characters from 'The Sandcastle': a spectral dog Liffey, a fourteen-year-old girl Felicity (who believes she can see Liffey - the dead family pet) and a man playing cards, who may be either Angus (the imaginary person Felicity sees in different guises) or the traveller that other figures in the novel come across at various points. This drawing is not so much an illustration of a particular scene in the book but an exploration of juxtaposing different elements in an image. On the subject of good - dogs are often a symbol of good in Murdoch’s novels and the three aces in playing cards is sometimes seen as a sign of good luck.

Chapter V: A Buddhist perspective about the pilgrimage to the Good
10. 'The Sea, the Sea'

'Jupiter’s Passage'
Kevin Petrie
2023
Ink on paper
21×29.7cm
Photo: David Williams

This image is not based on a particular Murdoch novel but the depiction of a dream might be seen to link to ‘The Sea The Sea’ where the narrator, Charles Arrowby, often suffers restless dream filled nights. It fact it might be said that Charles spends much of his waking time in kind of dream where he fails to see the reality of the world around him. The two talking figures in the boat might be seen to represent a kind of dialogic passage or pilgrimage. The drawing was made at a time when the planet Jupiter was particularly bright and large in the UK night sky and this inspired Petrie to incorporate it into the image which adds to the dream-like atmosphere of the image.