Baucis and Philemon

One of my favourite stories from Greco-Roman mythology is Ovid’s fable about Baucis and Philemon, a peasant couple who, after showing Zeus some decent hospitality were rewarded by being turned into trees when they died, entwined for ever more.

I spent a lovely afternoon having a picnic with friends in Greenwich park this afternoon and saw some magnificent old chestnuts with thick, twisted trunks that look very anthropomorphic indeed. They certainly looked like a Philemon or a Baucis, or they could have been ents, either way, I’m going back to sketch them and take some photos, they were fab.

Walking through the wonderful maze that is the Barbican Centre a couple of weeks ago, I came across, appropriately enough, a bronze statue of a minotaur by Michael Ayrton. I was curious and realised I didn’t actually know the details of the Minotaur story so I went and found out about the ancient myth of the part man, part bull creature locked in the Cretan Labyrinth. The most entertaining source I discovered was Jim Henson’s The Storyteller programmes which aired about 1990 and which I’d never seen before. The short dramatisations of various myths and folk tales put live action and puppets together to great effect. Series Two included the Minotaur myth as well as another, even better episode about Daedalus and Icarus. Michael Gambon played the storyteller, and Brian Henson performed and voiced the brilliant dog puppet who was the storyteller’s companion and audience. I do find I pay more attention when something is being explained to me with cartoons, animation or puppets; I’m a bit kid trapped in a late 40-something body! Jan has taken this on board and, attempting to address my spectacular failiure at learning his native language, German, has bought me a kiddies German book with lots of lovely colourful illustrations in and I’m much more likely to pick this up and actually read it – if only I could present my strategic planning documents at work using cartoons I’d be a lot more engaged. Anyway, here’s the Michael Ayrton Minotaur at The Barbican:

And here’s a minotaur collage I made this weekend:

Punta de Ses Portes 3

I’m still enjoying working on images of this landscape I discovered on the South West tip of Ibiza last month. I’m using the bare bones of the landscape – a stone tower, a few scrubby pine trees and rocky slopes –  to work out some ideas with my pictures too – I feel some of the recent collages have not gelled as well I wanted them too, and I think it may be because, using the collage technique, I prepare all the elements of the picture seperately, and this sometimes leads to different treatments and approaches to different parts ot the picture which, once they’re assembled together, don’t quite convince as a cohesive whole. A particular problem is when I treat one element quite naturalistically, and then another in a more stylised manner and the different approaches don’t knit together. I did a collage yesterday attempting to simplify thngs a bit by keeping it more graphic and stylised in feel. I think this is the way to go, and the more representatinal style I think I might use in direct paintings pieces rather than the collages. Anyway, it’s all good fun, and we’ll see where it goes next!