Ian Pentland, the Belfast born artist and architect, has created a remarkable series of ‘Timeline’ works. The artist takes a birds-eye view of a fictional landscape and, over numerous canvases, records man’s mark on the landscape as it changes and is forced to evolve. Yet no human figure is ever recorded in the scene – only the consequences and products of their actions.

‘Evolution’ is a series that maps and records the birth of a settlement through multiple chapters - narrative paintings that recollect its historical journey across centuries of change. The artist begins the series with a small 30 x 30 cm. canvas - ‘Birth of the Settlement’. Here, in a clearing in the woods, an iron age homestead has been constructed. The next canvas, depicting the scene hundreds of years later, sees this settlement grow and a Roman fort has appeared nearby. And so on as the story continues with the artist adding more canvases to each chapter to accommodate the urbanisation of the area.

The current lot, ‘Evolution - Act 4 “Consolidation”’, is a single canvas taken from the last chapter in the series. 400 years after the original chapter, it observes the settlement in the autumn crumbling in the top left of the image while the Roman fort has evolved into a prosperous harbour.