As regular readers will remember, over the past few days I finished a series of six images, and believed that I had drawn a line under the project. At least, that is how I imagined the situation to be. To my own great astonishment, as I got into bed last night it came into my head that the set was radically incomplete, and that a seventh image cried out for addition to the others.
So my own surprise I managed to sleep quite well, and didn’t do what so often I do, namely, get up in the middle of the night driven by some artistic compulsion. When I awoke this morning, however, the idea had, somewhere deep in my unconscious, matured into a reasonably complete idea. As soon as breakfast was over, therefore, I headed for the studio armed with the thumbnail sketch I had noted down yesterday at bedtime.
It didn’t take me long to locate on the internet a photograph that would serve as a model for the face I wanted at the centre of the picture. Two hands were essential to the idea, however, making very specific gestures, and for this I actually photographed my own hands making these shapes in the mirror. The longest delay was in checking out the symbolism in European mythology of the holly tree. To my delight, and slightly to my surprise, all of these elements fitted together very readily. It was almost as if without my knowledge or awareness my brain had actually been busy while I slept, reviewing the idea and making a short-list of potentially useful solutions for the final version of the idea. It was all very remarkable indeed, and I can’t recall ever having had an equivalent experience.
The upshot of it is that I have spent the best part of the day in the studio, working up the finished version of the picture. There is still work to be done because it is necessary at the moment to leave some of the painted surface to dry thoroughly overnight. Nevertheless, I am prepared to believe that I should be able to complete the project tomorrow leaving me (to my own great surprise) with a finished set of seven images.
As they used to say in the celebrated Monty Python sketch: “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Their arrival would be, I’m sure, no less surprising than the experience of the past twenty-four hours.