In the year of his death, my great-uncle, the artist Nigel Henderson, wrote a letter addressed to my future self. In his letter, he asked me to decipher a painting he made of the fossilized cliffs at Walton on the Naze in Essex, in the east of England. As a clue, he sent me a photocopied manuscript of the novel “The Fourbanks of the River of Space” by the South American novelist Wilson Harris, who lived nearby. Afterthoughts of a Walk on the Naze is a quantum fiction that attempts to answer his letter. I revisit the house and studio where he made the painting and film the surrounding seascape/riverscape and the cliffs the painting references. Harris’ book, the landscapes and the painting work together in counterpoint, revealing ideas about artistic inheritance, creation, death, weather and time.
