In 2004 I produced a painting titled Elijah and the Raven. My friend the painter Sigrid Muller saw the work in progress in the studio and afterwards thoughtfully e-mailed a poem by Seamus Heaney that she felt would interest me. The haunting Saint Kevin and the Blackbird is Heaney’s account of the the hermit voluntarily rooted to the spot for the time it takes a hen blackbird to weave her nest in the palm of his outstretched hand, lay a clutch of eggs, incubate, hatch and rear her brood. Although I felt the poem would lead to future paintings, for quite a while all thoughts of hermit saints were vanquished while I turned to horses instead of birds, immersed in a commission from the Old Stile Press to illustrate their edition of Peter Shaffer’s play Equus. (Published 2009) However once the last images for the book had been packed and posted to the press, Kevin and his blackbird returned to preoccupy my thoughts and the walls of the studio began to quickly fill with taped-up preparatory drawings. Here are some of the paintings that resulted from those drawings. They’re for my forthcoming exhibition Touchat the Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff, opening in March next year.
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So Elijah led to Kevin and Kevin to Francis. Where next?
