Festival anticipation

It all comes down to the little things really doesn't it? Email alert to go see my proofs for greetings cards and, besides seeing my images in print at last, loved seeing the wee words on the back: Artist... Publisher.... and one of them was me! Now I ain't no publisher chick so that must doggone make me an artist! My somewhat bizarre upbringing means that it is very hard for me to accept praise or 'put myself forward' (derogatory phrase from childhood meaning to have any degree of self confidence). Thus I have been fighting the very idea of calling myself what I am. It's now nine months since I made the conscious decision to answer "painter" to the question "what do you do?" Now here I am teetering on the monumental answer "Oui, je suis un artiste" (when in France obviously, I am not getting that 'pretentious, Moi?'). I just love different languages; not sure how to speak them very well but I like to hear them and look at them - this is why I use them in my titles for paintings. For me its all about the beauty and look of the words, whatever language they happen to be in; it helps to be of mixed nationality with no obvious 'hometown', apart from the one I choose.

All together it was one of those magic days of superfabdom, when all things went well in the world (or maybe I just chose to see it that way...), from a great morning's painting to a wonderful and cheap haircut via an easy drive through town playing excellent new music.

Oh yeah, and the card proofs; on which there is actually more superfabdom to come. 'My publisher' wants to get them out in time for the Book Festival, whose dates I am rapidly going to familiarise myself with; this will obviously be a very good thing and is a total bonus as I didn't even know that such things were shown at the Book Festival. To be honest, I think the last time I really paid attention to anything Festival was before I worked in the C-word; catering. So... that would be over fifteen years ago; thats a lot of missed Festivals for a dweller of the Festival city.

Had a few more bursts of inspiration over the course of the day; it is often the way when I am in super happy mode as I am letting go of the negative nonsense that can so easily get in the way; my inner smiley blue self is radiating inspired things. Idea number one involves a couple I saw taking an 'arms length' double self portrait in front of the castle; they were all colourful like one of my pictures so I immediately saw Madame Tabere and one of her angel buddies recreating the pose as if they were capturing their meeting for the album. Put a whole new slant on Madame (Suki) Tabere as well; instead of some mystic, witchy person she became a friend of the angels - someone they like to hang out with. Not necessarily to predict catastrophe or pass on messages to the living, just her angel homeys. Loving it.

Idea number two built neatly on the forest angels 'look' - watching Amadeus I was reminded of the great winged helmet worn in Don Giovanni and popped one on the head of an angel in my sketchbook. Great look, very Roman. Doric?

Third idea was from 'My Publisher' upon seeing my new and much loved new painting, 'Der Engel Flusterer' (that's what I meant about the language thing); he commented on her dog in the bow of the boat and suggested angel figureheads; a fine idea.

So grows the narrative! Madame Tabere was outed by my publisher, who immediately referred to her as 'Suki', so I thought "Yeah, why not?" Thus all the previous Suki images link into the new ones, simply because it's actually the same character... Doh.

Currently still sailing the Scottish Isles, who knows where Mme T will navigate before the year's end?