"A Forest Enchanted" - Digital Image License

Those who knew little me will recognise my faithful childhood familiar, Harvey, to whom 7 year old me used to read stories and poetry when he was a wide-eyed kitten (and I swear he listened, sitting quietly in my lap, my normally feisty and quite ferocious farm kitten).

As I painted this, I was joyfully evoking the feeling of diving into a brand new and fresh-smelling or oft-read, beloved, dog-eared book... as well as the bereftness when the final page was turned. I also felt how this captures the innocence and freedom of childhood, and my most fervent wish that all children, everywhere, be able to live in innocence and freedom, and in a safe place to let their imaginations be ferried away to fantasical worlds - and not to escape a bleak world but purely for the joy of it.