LINKED ISLANDS II, 1947
Ink and gouache. 12¼ x 17½in. (31.1 x 44.5cm.)
Paul label on the reverse.
Provenance
Private collection.
Exhibited
Penzance, Newlyn Orion Gallery, 1976, No. 31.
Literature
Ratcliffe (2007) illus. col. pl. 75.
The technique is decalcomania.
The linked islands are St Agnes and Gugh in the Islands of Scilly. They are separated by water at high tide but joined by a sandy causeway at low tide. The two structures shown are St Warna's Well on St Agnes and the standing stone on Gugh. This stone, The Old Man of Gugh is the subject of the drawing on the dust jacket of The Living Stones.
In her unpublished prose poem The Myth of Santa Warna, Colquhoun wrote:
“Santa Warna takes root in the West, recognising on the eastward semi-isle a presence older than her own. There on a ferny incline stands the Old Man of Gugh, his roots ringed by bell-heather.”
The Old Man is an image of sexual penetration.
The meeting of land and sea provides a horizontal connection between these two elements. The painting also incorporates vertical connections between the tiers of the cosmos. The menhir and the fountain connect the earth’s surface with the underworld whilst, at the same time, reaching into the air and sky. The fountain’s power reaches the surface from below, whilst the menhir links to the subterranean world from above.
All the works in the Santa Warna series depict the well as a substantial structure atop a short flight of steps. In reality, at the time when Colquhoun may have visited St Agnes, the well would have been little more than a natural spring in a field surrounded by unworked stones.
Reference
Ratcliffe, E. Ithell Colquhoun. Mandrake, Oxford. 2007.