Sunnifa Hope

Mid-1460's from the series 'Remote Landscape'

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A jagged outcrop of rocks sits level with her left eye, rough, not smoothed by glacial time. These rocks sit on the horizon line against a bluff sky. On the right side, the landscape looks almost arctic with tinges of blue, and structures that mimic ice shards or salt crystals. By her chin: lakes of icy water that form small inlets and sounds against the base of the mountains. At odds with this cool scene her draped clothes flow easily into a humanised brown landscape with a winding road, similar to the folds of her sleeve, and in the same golden tones as in her hair. A small bridge branches out from her right shoulder linking the golden earth with the beginnings of grey mountains. She is a solitary figure within this imaginary space, this remote landscape. It is a space for reflection, like the hermit's cave within a scholar's rock, or ours. Or perhaps ours is the place beyond, the other side, the back of the painting made from its single plank of wood with its four dark slats, its few small holes from woodworm, its oak frame.

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