Price : Milan Kundera wrote a novel with this title in 1984. It’s a book about living in Czechoslovakia in the late Sixties. It’s a political novel without writing about politics. The focus is on the people. The blue line through the painting is meant to portray the road one of the main characters travels along routinely. I thought I would use the technique I developed in this painting more often. The technique involves painting a transparent coat of blue over coloured fields. The transparency of the book inspired me to do this.