Inspirations

I knew that I wanted to bring my everyday experience of city life and my intuition that something ancient still underlay its grey streets together into an art work.

I knew the way to do it had something to do with deer, the deer I had seen in Connecticut, the deer I had noticed as motifs on city gentlemen’s ties. I knew the way to do it had something to do with the photograph of my goddaughter, the child who, in play, had struck the pose of a goddess.

***

I went to the National Gallery to study the “The Death of Actaeon”. A favourite painting of mine for many years, I knew it would help me as I sought a way to bring all the images in my head into some sort of coherence.

I began to search among the collection for images of hunting, of deer, of forests.

There they were – the dark forest of Titian’s terrible image of Diana’s fury and revenge, the holy forest of Pisanello’s St Eustace as he gazes at his vision of the stag with the crucified Christ between his antlers, the sexy forest of Lucas Cranach where the stag, half hidden by a tree, casts a sly glance at the naked Venus and Cupid stung by bees. And there was the perfect deer, the white hart on the Wilton Diptych, painted more than seven hundred years ago for King Richard II of England.

Now I knew what to do.