Sources of Inspiration.

Being an arty type of person i often identify muses in my environment. this sounds wanky but it actually isn't at all. Henry Miller had Anias Nin, Pete Doherty had/has Kate Moss. My muse is more like the ocean on a windy day or coffee underneath a tree.

The closest thing i ever had to a human muse was this boy i went out with in my mid 20's. He and i would paint on his roof top garden and if he hated his work he's simply throw it off into a tree. i LOVED that about him. He was always so intense and present. A large portion of our relationship was dedicated to listening to music or him playing guitar, me singing. And then there were the love letter. We wrote each other letters every day. We lived together by the way but we'd still write love letters with little drawings...occasionally whole comic strips. He still has them and occasionally makes me blush by reciting a random quote.
I think part of it is that physically, he is amazing. I could have painted his eye lashes a thousand different ways or described the curve of his finger tip using nothing but words beginning with Z. For two years, we lived in each others pockets. He'd carry my surf board, i'd cut his hair. We'd cook for each other and sit under the big tree in the back yard on impossibly green grass and talk about what we'd name our children. And about how we'd never brush their hair.

Alas, i lost myself in the romance of it all. i drowned in all the words and the songs. Eventually i stopped using oils because the clean up was too much to deal with. So many jars of murky water and threadbare paint brushes. The intensity was not sustainable and so, stroke by stroke i created another life in which he was not the centre of my universe.

i still have my paintings from that time in my life though and they are quite beautiful. Each canvas has blue biro love heart on the back with his name written right in the centre.