Yayoi Kusama

I visited the Tate this week and saw the spotty paintings and installations of the artist Yayoi Kusama. She has a kind of hallucinatory condition where she sees the world covered in spots and has recreated this in her artwork as a way of coping with it. She has lived in a psychiatric hospital, self imposed, since the 70s in a room with just a bed and french windows looking out onto a garden where she can see tennis players. Every day she eats breakfast, walks to her studio to paint, comes back for lunch and then back to her studio and is looked after by the staff, I guess, who feed her and tidy up . .....This life appeals to me!

Ride a White Swan

I have been thinking, of late, about T Rex, aka. Marc Bolan's, lyrics. They seem completely weird and surreal and I like their woodland theme. I wondered who "people of the Beltane" were from Ride a White Swan and discovered they were witchy/wizardy types who were a bit wicker-mannish:

 Beltane has long been celebrated with feasts and rituals. The name means fire of Bel; Belinos being one name for the Sun God, whose coronation feast we now celebrate. As summer begins, weather becomes warmer, and the plant world blossoms, an exuberant mood prevails. In old Celtic traditions it was a time of unabashed sexuality and promiscuity where marriages of a year and a day could be undertaken but it is rarely observed in that manner in modern times. 

I have been making prints and sticking them on boards, ready to hang, I will add them to my shop soon. Including the picture above once I have photographed them.