Terence P. Flanagan PRUA RHA (1929-2011)Studies towards 'January God'A set of three, mixed media on paper, 75 x 55cm (29½ x 21¾'')Signed; together with a printed copy of Seamus Heaney's 'January God', illustrated by T.P. Flanagan, published by Arts Council of Northern Ireland. (4)Exhibited: T.P. Flanagan Retrospective, Ulster Museum, Belfast; Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin; Fermanagh County Museum, 1996, catalogue no.35 (reference to).T.P. Flanagan and Seamus Heaney were crucial creative presences in each other’s lives throughout their enduring friendship, and in 1972 this took on a very practical form when the Arts Council of Northern Ireland decided to make a poster to accompany Heaney’s poem January God, and commissioned Flanagan to make an image for it. The complex, ambiguous form that Flanagan evolved seems to relate to natural forms, with a neo-romantic intensity that recalls Graham Sutherland, but the crown of thorns has also been interpreted as a response towards the violence of the Troubles, which was then at its most intense. Dickon Hall, February 2020