‘Moonstruck With Music and Madness’, acrylic on paper, 23 x 64 cm, 2017

I recently came across the poem In the Forest by Oscar Wilde. It’s short and sweet and rather lovely. The title of this collage piece quotes from the penultimate line, when the author fears for his sanity if he fails to track down his elusive quarry in the shadowy forest.

I used bits of paper scraps left over from some collages I made recently for the Imagined Realms show in Conwy, added an arch and a centaur and tried to conjure a world of disorientating shadows and patches of moonlight, a place where you’re always on the edge of getting lost. It’s an intoxicating place, too, where a flicker of movement seen out of the corner of your eye leaves you with the feeling that you’ve just seen something very strange indeed – or that you’re going slightly mad. You peer in the direction of the thing you thought you saw, but in vain; it’s gone.

I guess i’m in that slight vacuum of having just finished one project but not having started the next one yet. After an exhibition I can sometimes feel flat, not sure what to do next. The important thing, of course, is to do something, and then something else, and then something interesting will start to emerge and you’re off again, with a clearer direction to follow, like Oscar Wilde’s fleeting faun…

I’ve also been busy either working or travelling for the last three weeks so this weekend felt like a luxury, at home in Whitstable and with some time to play at the art table. The weather was blustery and cold,  so I had a very enjoyable Sunday staying in, keeping cosy, snipping and glueing 😉