friday 17th

This feels like standing on the top of a high mountain in the middle of nowhere and shout on the top of my voice...Helloooo..and my voice hits me hard in the face...there's nobody here but me. 

There's nobody here but me...which is nice for now.

Venetian Red is the name of the book I'm trying to finish. I could easily say it is autobiographical but it would be a lie. It's a fictional story full of gore, splatter and despair....and love but not the fairy tale kind.

I have been writing in the weirdest places and with the oddest soundtracks. 

The woman in the painting is Queen Anne. She died of podagra (a nasty infection of the toes) in 1714. She died childless. This portrait shows her young and fresh and I thought it goes nicely with the background I chose, though I wouldn't mind other suggestions. This portrait was made when she was happily married..after her husband died, she turned all fat and ugly. There are other portraits of her during that period which will make you weep, if you are the weeping kind.

 I love portraits because they don't only show how the person looked but also who the person was and who the person wanted to be. In some portraits the pretence is so loud that you can read through the insecuries and complexes that the painter struggles to hide.