I took a photo of the Birdhouse, garlanded in flowers, late last summer. You’ve seen the monochrome version, appropriate for the season that was in it. This is the finish I originally intended.
Reviewing the original photo, I noticed for the first time that my two canaries were both in it. Sadly, and weirdly, on completion of the painting there was only one. So, something of a paean to love. Were I to travel through and beyond the birdhouse, and keep on going, I would eventually come to the Canary Islands. It is the point of origin of these distinctive birds, though the name for the archipelago is taken from the Latin for dogs, the canine species.
I have been to Tenerife and Lanzarote and the Portuguese island of Madeira. They seem somehow fabulous; fabled pinnacles of land in the immensity of the ocean. They are surely the seeds of such myths we fashion; of Atlantis and Tir n nOg and Hy Brasil. Yet, here I am in my own back yard, painting flowers and spinning yarns. Some of our more exotic destinations are right here.
Oh let me go, where the blue flowers grow!
(Where the Blue Flowers Go, by the Cujo Family, is an appropriate themesong for this voyage through Bray and beyond.)
xxharrison 