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'Let's Play'.

Acrylic on canvas.80x80cm.

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Painted several years ago 'Let’s Play' is a favourite. It's strange and symbolic and I think of it often..... still love the colours and atmosphere and this seemingly simple composition is loaded with memories of me and my brother playing outside in this ancient garden for days and years. Light and dark. Good and evil.

We’d dig up the old flower beds and make cities in the mud and pretend to be famous archaeologists for finding 1000's of ancient broken China pieces in the soil.

True treasure . (That’s the left side).

And we’d play cowboys and Indians alot, camp and light fires and I’d get tied to a stake. (That's the right side). There's a birthday party (in the middle) to celebrate the summer of 1976 and this magic cherry blossom tree, cool and dewy and perfect to lie under at dusk and stare through the pink into blue.

This was the good part of the garden, but on the other side of the red brick wall it was frightening. But exciting. To go there needed bravery. Always in shadow, with moss and snakes and slugs and many ghosts. And four vast trees in a row filled with ravens cawing letting in no light.

The watchmen trees.

(On the top left) the vertical lines represent this bamboo forest, thick and strange with a pond in the middle that sometimes you’d find and others not.

It had black water and cobalt blue drangonflies. 

So I have painted this garden or parts of this garden over and over. Its magic is etched deep inside... like life inspiring imagining informing me to this day.  

 

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