Today I painted a bird orbiting a black hole, an image I saw quite clearly on the train while coming back from the R.B.S.A. Gallery yesterday. The hole is brown in the picture but I'll be glazing it with lots of different layers until it looks black.
Tomorrow I'll begin the composition to the picture for the Tabernacle competition. The subject is a poem about remembering summer in winter, but I focused on the last verse which is about the infinite rebirth of the seasons, a verse that had appeal because I've been painting a lot of rebirth pictures recently. I had decided on a tree giving birth to a woman, but I wasn't happy with it because I'd had that idea on and off about four or five times, ever since I began painting in fact. I decided on a phoenix picture instead. Many of my recent ideas feature phoenixes. This is the year of the phoenix! It's a true fact that this month a bird flew out of my lit fire and around the room before flying out of the window. Years earlier, thirteen flies flew out of the same fire and into the room. Although, logically, both of these events signify that birds can get trapped in the chimney, the two events also have a symbolic component. A few days later I dreamed of a beautiful butterfly flying out of the fire and the window. Sound the drums! Feel the vorfreude! Behold! Something great is surely coming!
