Following links

Continuing on what is fast turning into a linear journey with my angel friends; working on Holm Oak this afternoon after a busy turn at the day job that volunteered little in the way of inspiration besides a very timid artist who ran away when I tried to engage him in conversation about our mutual interest. He was buying a copy of 'Intellegent Life' which I keep looking at because it has a fab photo of Hockney from c. the 1960s with his big round glasses in black and white on the cover. My budget doesn't stretch to such things however so I may try and take a peak on the sly sometime. The timid artist was buying it for the cover story but that was the only information he was divulging before making his getaway. Scary old me.

So; the angels of Holm Oak (which is a pun that they think is funny because it is their home) are in a tree suspiciously similar to those of Archie's Park, thus raising the question of whether all trees are angel's dwellings. Just some I think, just as every gable does not house a swallow. Some trees that I'm pretty sure host angels are the horse chestnuts of Montmarte, where I have long suspected they live, so my next board may take us to Paris once more in the search of my winged friends. I will side track first as I have another board on the go which is a companion to 'The Glade'; a painting I did at the end of 2008 or the start of 2009 - or both maybe - of some wonderful monumental women dancing in a hidden glade. That was a straight interpretation of one of my more visual dreams, which I had in Chiang Mai, north Thailand on our first night there. It was particularly humid with thunder building so I guess my dream fits well with that; the feeling was very earthy and elemental.

The new one is a lone tree dancer, this time with a set of wings, who is more thoughtful than her predecessors and will be adorned with some potato print; I hadn't discovered my favourite print medium (or rediscovered) at the time of the first picture.

My idea for the November show now is to follow the path of my story and see where it leads, so that there is a link between the, hopefully, twelve images. Funnily enough I am just listening to 'The Link' section on Sunday afternoon's 'Planet Rock', in which a listener concocts a long and complex series of music which interlinks in a series. Aha, an idea is born and echoed.

I'm thinking epic poem, medieval frescoes, folk wisdom and Bruegel, but aim to end up near the sea with some nautical influences and swans. There is the suggestion that the swans are also angels in hiding, so I shall find out...