This painting began as a depiction of a wind swept poet with letters and words transported in the wind and then onto her forehead. It didn’t work, cast aside and changed the idea to inspiration by starlight which also didn’t work and looked a bit stilted. Weeks passed. In frustration I poured 2 paint layer together and left them in the sun to dry and forgot about for the rest of the day. One greyish layer thinned with turps and a little oil flowed on top of an opaque creamy oilier layer. Instead of the whole surface being totally changed the paint had ideas of its own.
The poet with the Afro hairstyle morphed into poet with Mungo hairstyle, incorporated into a windswept tree shape that seemed appropriate after the battering we received in a sandstorm.
I like the rawness and immediacy of the paint strokes in the earlier versions and feel that at this stage I may have fiddled too much even though I liked the unexpected imagery caused by paint tensions.
