A couple of weeks ago I became almost obsessed with an image I had painted ten years ago of an old cottage I lived in at one time. I dug out old photos of the place and felt for some reason compelled to paint a new version based on the flower garden I had grown there....as an artist these compulsions to paint images do occur for no 'apparent' reason... inspiration is often a mystery....but I've just discovered from browsing here on Enchanted Folk (thanks to one of Dreamdeer's fascinating blogs) that the compulsion to paint the new image of that cottage garden came to me around the night of the Perseids (of which fact I was unaware at the time, being somewhat ditzy at times these days!)

The original painting from 1998 was called "The Visitor" and depicted a star-being hovering above the cottage. The new version I painted at the time of the Perseids a couple of weeks ago is called "The Stars Came to Dance with the Flowers", a title I now realise was fitting with the meteors or 'shooting stars' of the Perseids which was occurring around then....though I was unwitting of that fact at the time, maybe some starry influence was filtering through. I did make an entry in my diary about vivid dreams...

Here are thumbnails of the two paintings below (click them to see larger views). The first is "The Visitor" painted in 1998, the second is "The Stars Came to Dance with the Flowers" painted around the night of the Perseids (August 2008).

A short story behind "The Visitor" - This is a mixed media painting from 1998 (watercolour, collaged tissue and inks). Original sold. It's based on a lovely old cottage I once lived in high on a forested hill (Highlands of Scotland)...it was really more of a romantic idea than actually idyllic : in winter it was literally freezing with ice on the inside of the window panes until I got the hearth cleaned and lit, water puddled up through the kitchen floor from the hillside behind and there was an inch gap under the ancient door. Between November-April thermal underwear was a necessity. But I still loved it there and have fond memories of the place. I was there for only a year but had to move when the owner wanted to renovate.

The story behind this image...one day I was typing on an electric typewriter (I had no computer in those days) when suddenly it started to hum louder and louder, the small LCD screen grew brighter and brighter and I quickly switched everything off....puzzled, and having heard stories of strange sightings of UFOs over that hillside, I went outside to see whether there was something hovering overhead!! (but nothing there). I even phoned the electric company to ask whether there was some problem with power surges (they'd heard of none).

I painted The Visitor ten years ago, but as I said felt inspired a couple of weeks ago to paint another image about the cottage based on the flower garden I grew there. The cottage was situated high on a forested hillside in the Scottish Highlands...standing in the garden felt almost as if you were floating above the valley on a carpet of flowers....and so a couple of weeks ago maybe the Stars did come to dance with the Flowers....