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“A Brighter Gold Than Ours”

The natural world can take no more and, one quiet summer night, it erupts to repel the human invasion.

The ground splits and the fierce armies of nature bursts forth. Their queen, standing on an old stone tower, directs her army against the solitary house in the landscape. The tower she is standing on is an old disused buttress which once supported a railway. It is itself is a remnant of a post industrial civilisation of the past. Its centre stone symbol is an even more ancient design based on the six winged seraphim of Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. Every creature in the painting is antipathetic to human interests. Even the plants are dangerous to humans. Giant hogweed, deadly nightshade, and psilocybin mushrooms frame the lower half of the painting. The creatures emerging are wild and represent the ferocity and forgotten knowledge of a natural world which is usually hidden.

While he was painting this picture the artist was diagnosed with cancer. The idea of removing an “unnatural” invader obviously then became very personally significant.

Title from “The Fire Outside the Walls” by Charles Marlow

Frank McNab