Deep Waters I

Graphite & charcoal on digital pigment print in an edition of 20, image size 66 x 48 cm, paper size 76 x 58.5 cm

Paradigms can be powerful in validating all kinds of beliefs widely held by societies. Many people today are still of the opinion that Europeans in Medieval times generally believed that the earth was flat, and that the belief in a round earth only became disseminated after the work of early astronomers such as Copernicus and Galileo. The paradigm is reinforced by allusions to ‘flat earth societies’ and by the use of the term ‘flat earther’ to refer to someone who is totally obdurate in their convictions in the face of evidence to the contrary. The problem with the ‘flat earth’ paradigm is that is certainly false. Historians have been telling us for some time that the paradigm is a pervasive error passed down through popular books until it gradually spread and became the generally accepted view of what people in a previous era believed.