The seed for this design began with the Northumbria Community’s Celtic Daily Prayer Book 2 meditations for Day 3 and Day 31 which are excerpts from William Brodrick’s The Sixth Lamentation, and in particular the line ‘We have to be candles’.
I started with a layout doodled in the notebook I carry round with me. By the time we were on retreat at Nether Springs in February, I had most of the design in place, and the colours worked out, and included a motif from my ‘Wings and Waves Celtic Cross’ design to tie it in with previous artwork.
We had seen the effects of Storm Arwen in toppling trees and taking out power lines, but it seemed to me that that would be nothing compared to a storm at sea, where the squall would not just fill the sky but the sea that the boat rested on would be wild and incredibly dangerous. That led to the design of the border as a surrounding stormy sea, but with the candle flames reaching out into it.