Salt: Pictorial Timeline
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The piece is a series of painted panels placed on the beams of the right
hand room on the top floor of Culross Palace thus creating a false
ceiling. The panels were painted using similar methods used to create
the decorative interiors of Culross palace; white pigment mixed with
size and water to white wash the panels, the outlines drawn in and then
pigment mixed with water to color in the design. It is painted as a
layered history of Culross spanning the time of St. Mungo to the West
Kirk, Sir George Bruce and his family, the coal mining industry that he
inspired and the trade links with the Netherlands and the town of Veere.
The end result is of a decorative ceiling charting a prominent period of
Culross's history, a story of the past placed within the walls of the
palace as if painted in the past.
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Artist's Notes:
My starting point was my immediate attraction to the decorative panels,
their faded colors and the knowledge that at one point they would have
been as bright as the reworked ceiling of The Study. The resulting work
was born out of a culmination of numerous visits to Culross with many
photos taken, web research, info passed on by fellow Hanging Together
members and lots of reading.
In the end my studio was covered in photos
of the palace interiors, the Bruce family tomb, old maps of Culross and
Veere, Dutch trade ships, St Mungo, Dutch tiles, the houses of Culross,
and a 'very good, tame lion'.
The panels
describe this layering of imagery and I wanted the finished work to
resemble an old and faded map. The yellow ochre chosen to reflect both
the color of Culross Palace and tarnished varnish of old paintings and
the prussian blue for the faded black outlines. The ochre roads of
present day Culross overlay images of the Bruce family from the past.
Images taken from the Dutch tiles of The Study create the background of
Veere from the 17th century.
Nicola Carberry
(Thanks to Patricia Carberry for her painting expertise)