Many will see this as an abstract, with firm black lines forming shapes and patterns on a strong orange field. It may be best to leave it at that and I certainly am not going to explain it in detail. Suffice to say that, in this case, I knew exactly what I was painting from the start: a map-like impression of a landscape that I know well on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire, seared into my mind over years of exposure to it – and hence bright orange is a perfectly reasonable colour for me to use to express it – with each black line, and the white shape near the middle, all based on specific archaeological features within it. A realistic stratigraphy is built into the image. This is probably the most sophisticated image based on the concept of ‘landscape archaeology’ that I have yet achieved; the worrying thing for me is that it was painted seven years ago.