Pike Hill

In a letter from Bankshead dated 17 September 1980, the artist wrote of the present work, 'it is one of many pictures of flying birds that I have done and have sold. Not many people paint flight, because they fixed themselves in their own stance whether that be a moving one or a fixed one. In flight as you well know nothing is static - neither oneself or the earth or the sky - and that is the only way to convey the experience on a canvas. The canvas of course being static - but nothing else - within it. Television does not convey the experience of flight to my mind, because the spectator is always looking at it - because it really is moving - whilst a picture is not moving - its stillness can alow [sic] everything else to move. Is that not so?'