John Crow 6.1.05 (2005) is one of Hoyland’s smaller works. His titles, which since the 1960s he has also named with the date of the completion of the work, suggest the essence of the painting. John Crow is a range of mountains in Jamaica, where Hoyland often visited with his wife Beverly. John Crow is also a term used in the Caribbean to describe a vulture, a bird of great symbolic importance in Jamaica, an omen of death. Although abstract Hoyland brings in the natural world, the bright coloured section hints at feathers in motion and a black shape could be viewed as a shadow of a bird. Birds are an important part of iconography in his last paintings — they could be seen as signifying risk, skill, loneliness, freedom and dynamic movement.