Mitch Cairns, Manuscript Painting, 2024, oil on linen, framed, 124.50 x 104.50 x 5.50 cm, TCG23600
(photo: The Commercial) private collection, Sydney

Artist's note on painting:

After many years of his readers asking what had happened to his unpublished novel The Third Policeman, the Irish novelist Flann O’Brien replied that the original manuscript had flown page-by-page from the open boot of his car as he drove through the nearby countryside outside of Dublin. The Third Policeman was published in 1967, one year after the author's death.