The Old Castle, Ben Dhaliwal

With this image, I hoped to create, as I often do with my pictures,
an operatic scenario. The castle and the forest form a background to the
‘troubadour’ figure who is also described as part of the original image.
My troubadour, like the castle is also an anachronism, he is adecidedly Baroque
Troubadour and therefore a late-comer to the tradition, half Comedia Del’arte,
half Flemish merchant, finely dressed in black velvets, damasks and a silk collar.
Like the barnyard fowl depicted next to him, he is richly plumed but also,
peculiarly, a forest dweller. The troubadour is always an outsider.
A solo performer whose circumstances, the great outdoors, are usually
acoustically poor, he is perhaps the paradigm of all artistic activity,
particularly that of the figurative painter. A practitioner of an often
hard won but invariably redundant skill.