Animals have always found their way into the heart of my life and my art. The first of these I ever painted was-A Squirrel. Being a born Naturalist ;-) I painted it purple. I was a fast worker at four and a half-ish years old, so on completion and possessed by a squirrel-like spirit of enthusiasm I attempted my first landscape by continuing over the crinkly edges of the paper with liberal applications of thick purple paint on my mothers precious parlour carpet! Both I and more so, my Grandfather, aka the responsible elder looking after me that day, was lovingly but firmly chided and banned from the parlour until "at least one of you grows up." Thus it was at four and a dangerous- half-ish that not only was the pure delight of painting discovered but also the excitement of creative anarchy, as we rebels retreated giggling shamelessly up the stairs to his library where we disappeared with a girl called Alice Through her Looking Glass until "things cool down" and the atmosphere "warms towards creative genius. "
My Grandfathers ingenious solution to keep peace in the home as well as "earth" the wild artistic abandon he had "accidently on purpose awoken," was to introduce me to Magick! No- I did n`t get whisked away to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry- although I hear its very good. No- I`m from Belfast so we had the next best thing; a mysterious cold shadowy room full of odd smells and writhing veils of steam trying in vain to escape called- The Scullery Kitchen. It was here I received the young neophyte magicians tools of the trade; the cup, the wand and magical grimoire... OK-A Big Jar of tap water- formerly of pickled Cauliflower -yummy, my wand was an oversized paintbrush with bristles as short, coarse and thick as a ditch-diggers fingers caught in a Mangle, and finally- the book of Spells- "A Magic Colouring- In Book!"
The latter was a truly wonderful invention! With a simple swirl of my "painty-wand" in water (with a few little pickle floaters still in it- I only say as it might be a key element of the spell), followed by a easy sweep across a stark line drawing on a plain white page and "something" appeared, conjured from seemingly nothing, but "nothing" is just as it seems for this simple act summoned, from secret spaces inside the paper, soft rainbow hues of every colour! A harp string was struck in some deep chamber of my heart and what- a- thrill- of wonder went shivering through me! That was it-in that innocent moment I was enchanted and could feel a mysterious Life path calling wordlessly for me to follow it- whatever "it" was to become.
Of course I pestered and probed to know the "how`s" and the "why`s" and was even more thrilled to find that after all the funny responses, the factual answer still revealed limitless fantastical opportunities. For I was in a world where with a bit of "pickly" water and paint, people can "dream up" and invent stuff that might just work wonders in the hearts and minds of others! Perhaps some "big person" or "small child" would be having an awful cold "blank canvas, emptiness" kind of day, but with a bit of a dream artfully "focused-pocused" with water and paint, it is entirely possible to throw open a hitherto unseen rainbow door through which enlivening rays of hope transform the concrete ghosts of impossibilities into enticing imps of potentials! Such un-sticking- of what is painfully stuck might help folk keep on going and doing whatever unique thing it is they do in this life.
Well that's where all this art adventure began for me and I kind of wish I still had that first purple squirrel painting, mind you, I get the distinct feeling the real "Purple Squirrel" is still on my heels driving me to rebel against my own limits -"Go on! Paint over the edges and see how far the story goes!" Parlour carpets BEWARE!
"What fills the eye fills the heart."
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