This painting is partially inspired by lyrics from ‘Billy 1’ on Bob Dylan’s soundtrack album to the Sam Peckinpah film, ‘Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid’, starring Kris Kristofferson, James Coburn and Bob Dylan himself in a cameo role.

“Many of Peckinpah’s films were about the loss of freedom and innocence, and in this film, there is a great deal of waiting around for death to come, hence the cigarettes, which is a recurring motif in Gollon’s paintings, bringing a sense of time lingering, and an invisible human presence into his seemingly unpeopled landscapes. The electric yellow sky is the same as found in his Fourteen Stations of the Cross, and ‘Desolation Row’ and ‘Einstein & The Jealous Monk’, and yet in this harsh and arid wasteland, the graves themselves seem to have separate characters. In the old Wild West, cemeteries would be referred to as ‘Boot Hill’, since your boots would normally be taken to re-use, before they buried you.”
David Tregunna, CHRIS GOLLON: Beyond the Horizon’ exhibition curator.