This is one of a small group of paintings, which could be installed as a series, each depicting a scene near McFadyen’s home – a wall, an open space and a high-rise block of flats. In a letter dated October 1997 the artist wrote that the painting was ‘prompted by Herzog’s film Even Dwarves Started Small, in title as least… Briefly the dwarves are metaphors for the smallness of people whose relationship to their surroundings is that of a ‘victim’; the fact that this is permanent and insurmountable; the image of project housing as a zoo; the expressiveness of graffiti; (all of this) is consistent with themes in my painting (of the time). What (was) new, is the staging… of the ‘characters’ in the scene reminiscent of the graveyard sequence from Plague of the Zombies (1966).’

Cries & Whispers New Works for the British Council Collection , The British Council 1988