Anthony Laverty

I am quite new to printing and although I paint regularly I was looking for a new venture and so I joined Northern Print earlier in the year and started exploring linocut. I have thoroughly enjoyed learning a different skill and enjoy the design aspect as well as the cutting techniques involved . When the opportunity to create a picture based on the Roman Wall came up, I was immediately interested.

It wasn’t long ago that I had been considering how long the Romans had occupied Britain and how hundreds of years of occupation would have felt like the norm to generations who were born and died during this period. They would have known nothing else. This was something that had never occurred to me as a youngster. My perception of Roman occupation was based on Hollywood movies of warriors and battles but life under the Romans would have felt much as life does today with people getting on with the trials and tribulations of everyday tasks. This means that relationships and communities would have developed. Dependencies on this other nation would have grown and the assimilation of the Roman culture would have taken place quite naturally over time.

Thinking about this and the impact on the British people with the eventual withdrawal of the Romans from our culture after generations, made me consider the human relationships which would have inevitably developed during this period. My visit to the milecastle sites 17 to 19 was unremarkable as there was little to be observed by the untrained eye. The remnants of the wall are all but hidden beneath a hedgerow however I was inspired by the landscape surrounding it. My thoughts turned to human relationships developing between the occupiers and the local people and how this would have changed through the many generations of people living in Northumberland. I thought about the dependancy on Roman innovation, organisation and protection from the people North of the wall and the contribution the Romans brought. This inspired me to try to create a print showing how the people of Northumberland accepted the Romans, giving up their sovereignty for the promise of protection and safety. Genuine human relationships and social interdependence would have become common. My print tries to capture this. The title of the print is The Promise.