"I wos here", Lincoln Cathedral

Another painting for my exhibition.

"I wos here", Lincoln Cathedral

Watercolour on Watercolour paper, 8 1/4" x 11 3/4"

This painting shows a detail of the stonework and part of a door on the West Front of the cathedral. The West Front is the only remaining part of the original Norman cathedral (around 1072). These wonderful, enigmatic faces were so attractive that I just had to paint them.

When I enlarged the photo I had taken as the basis for the painting, I realised that someone had scrawled "I wos here" on the stonework (you see this more clearly if you enlarge the painting). This seemed to me a rather philosophical statement to make on a religious building. Also I felt that the words somehow echoed the "statement" those medieval craftsmen were making with their carvings. After all the carvings are in a way the signatures of the craftsmen who created them. "They were here" all those centuries ago