Salacia, the Roman goddess of the sea, is not a new subject for me to paint. She appears, in modern guise, in two paintings, which I have described as the Neptune Paintings.

In 2024, I began work on two paintings, both of which took inspiration from Greco/Roman art. One is The Quiet Zone, and the other is The Art of Bathing. These would become the first in a series of paintings titled Gods, Goddesses, and Heroes.

The Art of Bathing underwent radical changes over a course of a year before I was satisfied, as much as I ever am, with the final result. At one stage, I reduced the size of the panel, making it a square. Originally, the woman, was seated to one side of the picture, as shown below.

As I developed these two painting, I began to reconsider my representation of the figures.

At one stage, I used the same figure. Eventually these diverged. Although the woman depicted in The Art of Bathing is an invention, she does remind me of a living person, and it’s that sense of thinking I know, or knew her, that enabled me to feel comfortable with the final depiction.
Salacia needed something in blue. In fact I used three blues, French Ultramarine, Cobalt, and Nattier. I also gave her a piece of jewellery, creating a brooch consisting of two dolphins.

The viewer’s line of sight is set low. This lends the subject an aura of supremacy, someone in control of her domain.

The rug contains a motif of two dolphins taken from the apodyterium, the women’s changing room, in the Central Baths at Herculaneum, which I had seen in 2003. Herculaneum, like Pompeii, was destroyed by Vesuvius in AD 79.

The two bronze heads are inventions. Again inspired by Roman sculpture. In my painting they give the impression of the floor as a pool of water.
The painting on the wall, depicting four women bathing in a spa, is also an invention, again influenced by Ancient Rome.

The Art of Bathing represents a modern view of art that takes its inspiration from the act of bathing, a subject that artists have depicted for thousands of years. In particular, it is inspired by the art of Ancient Rome.