Argo By: Robert McPartland

This large painting is of a small silver ladle laid on silk, seen from above but ambiguous in orientation so it can be interpreted as being seen from eye level, with the silk becoming a backdrop. Around the same time I came across an image of the beautifully preserved Oseberg Viking longboat in Oslo seen from the prow end and was struck by the similarity of its form to the ladle seen from the front. Scaling up the size of the composition strengthened the analogy and the silk became a broad sky; as the ladle is silver, the title Argo came to mind, being both the name of the ship in Greek mythology and an epithet meaning swift, shining bright. (deriv. argent)