When tragedy occurs in the middle of a calm green tropical sea the words ‘like a painted ship upon a painted ocean’ spring into the mind as if, in some contradictory way the fierceness of human behaviour could only happen in the stillness of fixed colours in setting paint, or on an artificial surface. Thus in such stillness (green being the colour of peace and clam) began a chain of events that would culminate in death – by illness in Batavia, by drowning on the Pandora, hangings at Portsmouth – and a bloody massacre on Pitcairn. Today there is a preoccupation with the subject of the painting filling the picture or touching the edges of the frame. The grand manner saw the subject reduced to a smaller element in a larger scene that otherwise hides clues to the narrative (here the discarded pot plants, circling sharks and distant storm).

23" x 15"