Oil on canvas

Bishop Startled.

[From R.O. Lenkiewicz, 1997] "It’s very true to say that I would form deeper relationships with some of the ‘cowboys’, dossers, alcoholics, vagrants, call them what you will, than with others. There is something about some of them that is similar to St. John in the desert, a character who interests me more than Jesus. There is something about the desert father, this notion of 'acidia', of not looking to the horizon and not needing to be distracted.

The Burial of John Kynance.

Painted as if from the point of view of the recently deceased dosser, John Kynance, Death appears as a jester, mocking the living. It is based on Gustav Courbet’s painting Burial at Ornans (1849-50). Like many Lenkiewicz paintings from this period, it was made on sewn-together strips of sailcloth. Lenkiewicz, perpetually short of funds and frequently visited by debt collectors and bailiffs, was glad of any painting materials he or the vagrants who knew him could recover from the Barbican sail lofts or chandlers.

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