The Theatre of a Tangled Garden

Watercolor & 24-ct gold leaf on paper, 42 x 1025 cm, Private Collection

The Byzantine arch and the calm symmetry of the architecture frame a slightly chaotic ancient garden now run wild. I created a rhythmical dance of goldfinches on the thistle plants that they love. I often paint goldfinches, an exotic inhabitant of the English garden and always cheer everyone who sees them. I immediately loved Byzantine architecture on visits to Florence, Ravenna and Bologna in Italy. The patterns and shapes I’ve made in the arches are inspired by late antique and early Christian book illumination, particularly the 6th-century Rabbula Gospels, one of the earliest Christian manuscripts with large miniatures. (Some books that I purchased in the most wonderful bookshop in the world, Powell’s City of Books in Portland, Oregon have proved to be invaluable!) This was the first painting I made in my ‘Arches Series.’ Repetition of the shapes here—drawing them and making the decoration, tiny bit by tiny bit, becomes a kind of meditation. This painting took shape over a couple of years.

Curator’s Note: Byzantine is the term historians use to refer to the civilization centered in Constantinople (today’s Istanbul) that considered itself the ‘New Rome.’ Founded in 330 by Roman Emperor Constantine I, the empire lasted until the city was finally conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Detail

Detail