I feel extremely fortunate to have seen as much Neolithic art as I have. Here on Anglesey there are some excellent examples of rock art still within its context, dating from four thousand years before the current era. It’s incredible that it’s still here to be seen. First four pictures are at or around Barclodiad [...]
Photos from the Trefignath burial mound near Holyhead, on Anglesey, showing two of the chambers. In the third shot you can see a band of quartz crystals that were on the back wall of the largest of the three chambers. The building was raised in about 3750 BC, then sealed by about 2250 BC, so [...]
I still love this stuff as much as ever. Anglesey, North Wales. This was the last stronghold of the druids before they were annihilated by Agricola, who slaughtered them and overthrew the sacred groves. There’s not a single stone circle left on Anglesey, just fragments. From the Roman propagandist Tacitus: “… [Suetonius Paulinus] prepared accordingly [...]
Spent the last couple of days hiking in the Borders of England and Scotland, first in Lancashire where the Emperor Hadrian built his two thousand year old wall, walking past the quarries from whence the legions cut its stones and the forts that were used to guard the Northern frontier of the Roman empire against [...]
Having been held up in both Los Angeles and Heathrow airports, I’ve arrived in Edinburgh with our students and made a delightful trip to Rosslyn Chapel, where Christian symbolism runs riot in an extraordinary display of stone carving. Here allegory is the language of the masons who built this lovely little chapel, almost bringing musicians, [...]
We’re crazed at the university these days, in the midst of exam week and a frenzy of grading large stacks of drawings and paintings, but I squeezed in a few hours of painting time today, enjoying the company of my students Kiah and Payton, both working on learning en grisaille technique. It’s particularly good to see their efforts [...]
I’m back in the studio and in better shape, but still misfiring now and then. The bone painting machine is going in full force now, filling the lower half of the canvas with crania. A pigment note – I picked up a tube of Graham Van Dyke Brown for use painting the skulls on the [...]
