Dalkeith Arts commissioned ten local artists to each paint a panel. The panels depict six of the many women who were accused and executed for witchcraft in Dalkeith. The remaining four include a portrait of the local “witch pricker", and the last three are of iconic buildings in Dalkeith - The Watchtower, St Nicholas Buccleuch Church, and The Tolbooth (my painting). The witch trials were at their peak in the 1600s and six real women's names were chosen to represent all of the women and men who were executed in Dalkeith.
I painted the Tolbooth in Dalkeith which is the site of the last hanging on 1 March 1827 and a building for Dalkeith’s law and order with a courtroom, prison cells, and a dungeon known as the ‘’black hole’’.
The video shows the panel being painted from start to finish. I began with a reproduction of a newspaper article from 1827 reporting about the hanging of William Thomson in Dalkeith on 1st March...
