Christopher Le Brun’s imagery is often mythological or heraldic, but his technique is clearly modernist. He resolves this apparent disjunction by ensuring that the image and the material qualities of the painting are given equal importance while they are being developed. In gradually arriving at these archetypal motifs through many reworkings of the entire surface of the painting, the artist has the greatest freedom in handling without finally losing the possibility of communication. The image that is finally produced and the material presence of the painting are one. The reference of the work is allowed a freedom without prejudice to its formalities. In reply to some questions about the interpretation of this work, the artist wrote ‘A continuing subject of my work is ‘appearance’ for itself, and one way in which I have tried to draw attention to this is by driving a wedge between my painting behaviour and method, and the ‘pseudo-subject’ of the motif which attends it … My position has been to twist the motif away from its home, or to estrange it from its setting…The title Heartland, should point to my thinking about something central, an image, a heart, an inevitability, or even, in Wallace Stevens’ phrase, ‘the recognised home’, but still this should not bring us to patriotism, which would be too localised, with political and historical connotations unsuited to the timeless subjects I address. With this particular image I find myself looking at very early work. Wittenham Clumps is a stump-like hill in Oxfordshire. I saw it about twenty years ago, and this clump of trees is a familiar feature of the downlands. I remember quite clearly how it looked and how its shape re-appeared in my work at that time. I think it remains true of my work that I try always to epitomise the landscape and the field of painting (and here the painting itself becomes landscape). I like to think that the farmer who planted those trees had a sense of the old archetypes of this country or even had in mind perhaps a picture by Turner himself.'

Cries & Whispers New Works for the British Council Collection, The British Council 1988