Heaven

Original acrylic on canvas by David Page

150x150cm unframed

More by David Page

This body of work by David Page is part of an exhibition titled 'Our Land' which launches in Canvas Galleries September 26th 2024.

One evening at the outset of this project, while sitting with friends, I
idly asked if their extensive book collection contained anything about
the Irish landscape—how it was worked, framed, farmed, and
understood.
During the subsequent search, they found a little pamphlet full of
notes called ‘A Green Hill Far Away’ by E. W. Lovell. It was about the
wife of the 19th-century Bishop of Derry, Cecil Francis Alexander,
who, among many hymns including that of the title of the book, wrote
‘All Things Bright and Beautiful.’
It was the childhood memories evoked by the third verse that caught
my attention and inspired the journey of this exhibition, encapsulated
in the simple idea of an ephemeral brightness seen across the
hilltops:
‘The purple-headed mountains...
The sunset and the morning,
That brightens up the sky…’

Cecil Frances Alexander, A Green Hill Far Away - a life of Mrs C. F.
Alexander by E W Lovell, Friends of St Columb's Cathedral.