Louise Bradley

Carrawburgh – Brocolitia Fort, military bath-house, temples to Mithras, Spring Nymphs and Coventina’s Well. Overwhelmed by the options at this site, close to the road in high open moorland, I made return visits, looking to find a way in.

On my second visit to the site, down by the stream and Coventina’s Well, which had already become my main area of focus, I encountered a baby with its parents. I recognised the father from a regular online drawing group – I’d drawn his face on many occasions although had no other connection and we’d never previously met. The couple lived nearby and on its first trip out, were taking the baby to the spring to dab the divine water on his face. This astonishing coincidence led me to focus my work entirely on the water and the site of the Iron-age Water Goddess, Coventina, existing long before the Romans built the fort and temples.

The well’s presence would have given a preferred place to build, with its provision of water for the Roman military, happy to adopt existing customs. In some depictions of Coventina, the water goddess, she holds waterweeds: I drew the water mint and (Jurassic) horsetail growing in the stream. My intention was to show something of the ancient divinity and power of water but in an abstract, painterly way. Painting with printing ink on a silkscreen, I worked from stills from films I’d made while swimming underwater in rivers and in the sea.

I then used papercut stencils of the mint and horsetail to mask the first layer, overprinting another painted layer and finishing with a detailed printed drawing of more plant forms. The colours at top right suggest skin and sky; a view as seen from underwater.