There is paradox of which Colvin is acutely aware for a modern artist concerning himself with issues of national identity and cultural authenticity. Modernism is to do with freedom from parochial narrowness. But there persists the need to know what the tradition is - to belong to it or to reject it. The Scottish artist, Colvin suggests, is adrift from cultural tradition. Indeed, it is this sense of alienation that is the premise of authenticity.

This triptych, whose title refers to a Pictish tribe, considers the problematic question of Scottish identity. The lines or striations that made up the face of Blind Ossian have reconfigured to form a fingerprint. The established means of authentication of identity, unique to every individual, also contains the idea of disappearance. It is the trace that remains after a person is no longer present at the scene of a crime. The double helix of the DNA molecule is another symbol of modern methods of genetic identification. The Blind Harpist plays with an abacus rather than the golden strings of a lyre. Computation is indifferent to harmony. We are invited to ask whether the world is knowable to heart or head.

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