Bicci di Lorenzo

In the Ashmolean museum at Oxford there is a little painting by this Florentine artist, depicting a scene from the Life of St. Nicholas. The work can be seen to be divided more or less in two halves of light with the arrival of the saint, and dark, where the sky merges with the sea and the horizon is less clear. The sailors appear to be throwing something overboard , perhaps their belongings , perhaps something else. In three paintings that I made a few years ago I focussed on this object: there are times when something strikes me and there is a confluence of ideas that I need to respond to . I tried to do this here. In the history of my family there is an incident of incarceration, a straight jacket, a loss. I was already working with this when this beautiful painting was shown to me.