Cloak of Many Colours - Iona

Original acrylic on canvas by David Page. 

This painting is one of David's new 2026 collection, Grit and Grace: Iona. 

Each painting in the exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition, large-format book, featuring the full collection and David's insightful personal notes.

ARTIST'S DESCRIPTION:

Our admiration for the raw stone crosses and austere ecclesiastical interiors of Iona is likely a modern perspective. In their own time, these crosses and spaces were probably richly coloured, reflecting the vibrant manuscripts produced by the island’s monastic community works filled with intricate illumination and decorative brilliance.

In Book III, Chapter 1 of Life of St Columba, Adomnán evokes a powerful sense of the colour that once permeated Iona. He recounts a dream experienced by the mother of Columba before her son’s birth:

“An angel of the Lord appeared to St Columba’s mother in a dream one night after his conception but before his birth. He seemed to stand beside her and to give her a robe of marvellous beauty, decorated with what looked like the colours of every flower. After a little time he asked for it back and took it from her hands. Then he raised the robe and spread it out, letting go of it into the empty air… Then the woman saw the robe moving further and further from her as if in flight, growing greater and greater, so that it seemed broader than the plains and greater in measure than the mountains and the forests”.

The vision suggests a world of vivid colour and spiritual radiance—an atmosphere that may once have filled the crosses, buildings, and sacred spaces of Iona.

Want to learn more about the collection? Read David's full artist statement here.