Diana Neale b. 1949
Framed: H. 29 cm. x W. 33 cm. x D. 3 cm.
This miniature masterpiece pulses with the visionary energy that links Diana Neale to the mystical tradition of William Blake and Samuel Palmer, two titans of the spiritual and artistic worlds. The ancient standing stone, sentinel-like against brooding skies, speaks with the voice Blake heard in London's sacred stones: "Over 4000 years I have been here", a whispered testament to what Palmer called "the primitive and infantine feeling" for landscape as spiritual revelation. Painted on handmade paper with the jewel-like intensity Palmer achieved in his Shoreham sepia drawings, Neale's work captures that liminal moment when earth meets heaven under starlit darkness. The monolith rises like one of Blake's Jerusalem stones, both memorial and portal, while the surrounding downland rolls away in Palmer's characteristic "demi-paradise" hues of ochre and umber.