Is there any other sort of season, actually? It has somehow been so difficult to finish this turbulent little piece, perhaps because it put me in mind of other icons with stormy seas which I have painted which have painful associations: Peter drowning in the waves of Galilee, requested by someone newly diagnosed with dementia; reluctant Jonah thrown up on the shore at Nineveh (during the Syrian conflict). I must have begun it way back during the Corona crisis and since then there have been so many new storms - wars and economic crises in the world, illness and death in the family. Now it's finally off my desk, I'm looking for a time and a project with more peace and stillness. 

My icon of St Domitian of Carantania (no relation to to the nasty Roman emperor) is at last quietly glowing in the dark transept of Millstatt Abbey, my own parish church. He's a little outshone by the baroque bling in other parts of the church, but properly dignified all the same, and about time too, Domitian, our church founder and saint by acclamation, was the Slavic ruler under Charlemagne who established Christianity in what is now Carinthia. For centuries he was greatly venerated in the region - older parishioners tell me about the three-day devotion for his feast day in February: no one had cars in those days - they used sleds to get down the mountain for the services and trudged all the way back up again in the dark and snow. In the early 1900s a dilettante historian from Vienna wrote an essay pronouncing the saint to be just a legend invented by the Benedictines of Millstatt Abbey in order to pad out their business plan. And so poor Domitian was ignored, if not derided, until  archaeological excavations in 1992 uncovered part of his original tombstone and epitaph, clearly inscribed with his name and title, and tradition was vindicated.. Our historic Chapel of Domitian with his reliquary is not normally open to pilgrims and visitors, so my icon will be his chief representation in the main church, other than a worn late-medieval fresco on a pillar.
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I had to chuckle when the young chap who helped with the hanging asked in all innocence how I'd got the gold colour - had to explain that only real gold looks like real gold! Given all the trouble the gilding gave me this time around, I could wish there actually were some acceptable shortcut.

I rediscovered these little 'Netsuke Tigers' of mine at my daughter's place over Christmas, a birthday gift when she was going through an all-things-Japanese period. Inspired by some exquisite carved miniatures seen on-line, I somehow married the Japanese designs with a sort of western-style low relief and illuminator's gilding. I remember the first one was terribly awkward to do and by the the third I was quite in the swing. I'm not sure if I've struck on a new technique here or just painfully reinvented something old. Either way I'd like to take the idea a bit further but I'm not sure how - it's very time-consuming and one has to be a bit practical. Ideas, anyone?
#raisedgilding #netsuke #miniaturepainting

 I have been ignoring my blog for a long time, and here is one of the reasons why: my shiny new book just delivered ! I think this must be the first picture book illustrated in egg tempera since the Middle Ages. It is a bi-lingual story (English/German parallel text) for children of all ages. The Monster of Millstatt is a thirty-foot scarlet dragon who has been hibernating for a few hundred years in the mountains behind my house. When he finally emerges from his den he goes on the rampage and creates a load of comical trouble for the locals round the lake, till he is finally brought to heel and instated as a member of the community. The text and illustrations are  all my own, though naturally I had a deal of help with the German. British humour is not easy to translate, it seems. The whole idea first grew out of a school cultural project frustrated by Corona restrictions.  I thought it was a shame to waste a good idea, but it took over my life. I'm not a fast worker, and I quickly gave up counting the hundreds of  hours spent on the pictures. Then when I realised that hiring a graphic designer to help with the layout was unaffordable, I had to set about learning all the software skills to do it myself.  As for the printing, since I first approached printers for a quotation, costs have risen exponentially thanks to a world paper shortage.  Reader, be warned! If ever the fancy should come over you to produce a book, have a little lie down and let the feeling wear off. Now comes the work of shipping 500 copies out of my cellar and on to the coffee tables of Carinthia - not a small task for a sales-shy artist operating in a foreign language. But I think that luckily the book has appeal both for locals and tourists - a souvenir with local flavour which is neither kitsch nor too heavy to pack in a suitcase. And the book has already been adopted as an event in the Millstatt Music Festival for next summer - a reading with musical interludes, along the lines of Peter & the Wolf, orTthe Carnival of the Animals. Local music director Stefan Hofer will compose the music:, and I am so looking forward to hearing what comes - my only stipulation was that he must include bagpipes and alpine horns, Fortunately he has both those instruments at his disposal. -Millstatt has everything.

Copies available direct from me at €20 each (order form here).

Other than the massive embroidered wall-hangings I used to make years ago, my work is generally pretty tiny. But I used all the lovely space I had during my artist residency earlier this year to paint something much bigger (120cm wide including the integral frame). And correspondingly more expensive of course, though as I painted every inch of the piece with my usual attention to detail, there weren't really any economies of scale - rather the reverse, in fact. I've had it hanging on my own wall while I dithered about it, but finally it's hanging 'on appro' in a client's office and hopefully growing on him. He's a bird watcher as well as an art collector, and tells me he has counted over fifty birds in the tree....

I'm considering getting some posters made of this image: if you have any technical wisdom on the subject of digital reproduction, please let me have the benefit of your experience!