Left panel of triptych ‘Flatlands’ 2010
Christopher Bucklow
Triptych ‘Flatlands’ 2010
Christopher Bucklow
The left-hand panel of the triptych …
There is a picture behind the picture
A landscape Constable Gainsborough (though landscapes were hard to sell in eighteenth century Bath) Claude maybe
Now I am thinking the Virgin of the Rocks but something terrible has happened Herod and the Roman Army the Jewish guerrilla fighters whoever have swept away your innocence – knowing God but not yourself (your complicated messed-up being) and whose baby is it for Christ’s sake
And so you wanted to return with a paint pot a 4-inch brush bottle of white spirit orange and brown and white and violet tubs of paint from Homebase you hired the local boys to break in one night and take what you wanted you needed
And then smothered the canvas with angry random swipes except you distinguished the violet of the sky from the orange-brown earth the earth on which you lost your virginity and found an illusion and the heavens in which you lost your faith and found a vocation
