Today the 17th image was added to The Gallery and so, given the fixed number of images, 16, displayed in The Gallery at any one time, the very first image drops off the display (see Preface for explanation). That image is retained in my programme and I can make it available on request. The former presence of each ‘disappeared image’ will henceforth be recorded in Insight by reproducing there the identifier of and textual entry for each image as previously published in The Gallery. A small image will also be included where appropriate.
The 17th image, ‘White’, replaced the first image which was:
“84/06 ‘Trilithon 15’ Oil on canvas 30 x 25 cms
This is one of a series of images based on the idea of a trilithon. It is one of a pair, representing an immediate, relatively excited, response to the news of the discovery in 2006 of a mid-15th century manuscript containing a tiny drawing of Stonehenge.
As its discoverer observed in his article in British Archaeology (January/February 2007, p. 10), the original tiny (23 x 17 mm) drawing is ‘the first known design to represent Stonehenge not just as a symbolic image, but with precise observations on its form and construction techniques.’ Here I try to be true to those ‘precise observations’: the monument itself in my image is copied from enlarged images of the original as published to try to ensure that the significance of that original is not lost in basing a painting upon it.
The reason for copying is that, for the first time, the vignette shows four trilithons with their lintels penetrated by the uprights’ tenons, not exactly accurate in fact but nevertheless demonstrating a clear understanding of the carpentry technique of mortice and tenon used at Stonehenge to make the joints between vertical and horizontal stones.
I was conscious as I created this early 21st century image that I may well have been the first person for over 500 years to depict Stonehenge in this particular medieval idiom, so nothing in my paintings distracts from the central structure: grey on grey seemed appropriate for the distant view of a small, stone structure in a slight landscape depression but otherwise in no context at all.”