This painting was inspired by an old family treasure, a little hand-drawn map, shown below. It was lovingly hand-drawn by a friend of my grandfather,  probably  while they were  reminiscing here in London over a cup of lemon tea! Both men had arrived in this country in the early years of the 20th century,  fleeing persecution in their home country,  Lithuania (now Belarus), and both were from the same village, or ’shtetl’ , on the Polish border, humorously named Zeludok,  which means ‘belly’ in Russian!

I have interpreted this map in several more sombre abstract versions, including this one