Graham Sutherland: Welsh Landscape with Roads

With everything coming to a head work-wise, I've fallen into the trap of getting wrapped up in my own stuff and lost sight of everyone else's. So, to snap me out of it and as a tribute to the relentless heat which is supposed to finish tonight, I give you a Sutherland drenched in an alien heat.

Like Nash, Sutherland saw the strangeness and the mystery of the landscape. Here, a skull echoes the forms of the hills, the hillside is baked (unusually for Wales!) to the same red as the sun and the road is the colour of the harvest. Add in the running man and there is a strange feel to it all. I'm especially fascinated by the dark patches; are they there simply to echo the eye socket of the skull, are open cast mines and quarries or are they something else? Whatever their origin, they give the landscape a primal, animal feel.

It lives in the Tate but is currently on loan in the Lake District as part of the Exultant Strangeness exhibition if you want to visit it. Incidentally, that looks like an awesome show. Its on until 15 September at Abbot Hall.