Holy Trinity

Three travellers came to Abraham at noon, and he laid a table for them under the oak. From that story grew the most famous Russian icon: Andrei Rublev painted it for the Trinity Monastery of St Sergius in the early fifteenth century, and since then three angels at one table have been an image known even to those who have never entered a church. In Rublev there is no action and no principal figure: the three are bent towards one another, and the eye travels round the circle without finding a place to stop.

The series takes that circle literally: almost every work is a tondo. Inside it the image goes the whole way from icon painting to sign. In some pieces the angels are painted in detail, with wings, staffs and the cup on the table; in others three red halos remain on a white field; in others still a blue stroke on tile, where the Trinity is read only from the rhythm of three. Rublev's composition survives any degree of reduction, and the series tests that in practice.

The matter is relief on artboard, paint, gold leaf on the halos and ground, two coats of epoxy resin. The round format is cut for each work separately; the gold is muted with wax so that it answers the light instead of glaring. No piece repeats another: the edition is numbered, the hand is one.

The Trinity is an image of concord, and it belongs where people gather: a dining room, a living room, a meeting room, a home chapel. A circle with no top and no bottom holds the wall quietly, as if it had always hung there.