Peter Blathwayt
‘Days Before’ series – 11 October 1492 – West Indies
Oil on canvas, 30cm x 30 cm
This is the day before Columbus arrives. A last jewelled afternoon with paintbox sea so brilliant as to make your eyes water, and dazzling sand and delightful little chess-piece clouds borne on the breeze from the south-east. Tomorrow Columbus makes landfall, whereupon paradise found will simultaneously become paradise lost, forever. Conflict and avarice and the imposition of European imperatives will destroy the way of life of the innocent inhabitants, here and far beyond. Their world and ours will never be the same again.