I’m feeling immensely virtuous at the moment, having spent a good part of the last two days reorganising my files, and getting basically up-to-date in several other respects. It feels good! One of the things I did this afternoon was to update the section in this web-site entitled “Picture of the Month”. Yes: I am aware that the title does suggest that the picture will be changed every month, but it hasn’t worked out quite like that recently. Today, however, at the start of November, I decided that I would really make the effort to keep to my promise, and I put up a new picture. (Check it out.)
The image I chose was one I have never exhibited before, although it has been up on the wall of the studio ever since I finished it many months ago. The title is One for Sorrow. Originally it went with a companion piece entitled Two for Joy. For various reasons the second of these pleases me much less that the first. I do like the rocks which make up the greater part of the picture, but the human figure is not quite what I had hoped for, and I am not entirely confident that I know how to remedy the problem. (The magpies are fine.) So: it sits there waiting for me to have an idea.
Magpies have been a part of my intellectual and emotional furniture for some time. In the past I used to refer to them as my “totem”. When I was working in Macedonia I did a picture (which I sold) of a magpie and a hooded crow circling in combat above the head of a peasant woman. Sadly, I don’t have a decent photo of it, otherwise I might show that too. I wish I knew what was going on in my subconscious mind on these occasions, but the springs of art are often obscure like that.
Your comment on my picture of the month would be welcome.