Trumpets and Bells

Trumpets and Bells - oil on canvas - 60 x 80 cm - 2024

The festivals and annual celebrations that take place all over the world ever year, are more often than not the ritual enactment of myths and religions that date back thousands of years. Often the exact meaning has been lost, but it is still enacted anyway. This painting reflects this tradition, only the myth behind it does not exist as such, unless you invent one for it. The result is the same, visually at least; an inexplicable and marvelously irrational display of human mythic imagination.

It is themes like this that drive the particular poetic madness that I found so inspiring in a book called “Titus Groan” by Mervyn Peek, where I fell in love with a fictional character. Here she is performing an ancient and obscure ritual welcoming the morning with bells and trumpets.