AN AERIAL ARMADILLO: Light

I long for that feeling of being stunned, like when you emerge from a cool, darkened house into the light of Africa at noon. Blinded by it, made dizzy, as though you have taken a blow to the side of the head. Like stepping onto another planet where one breathes the air in splendid colours. I want to see the magnificent blue gold sweep of the Serengeti. I want to look up at the snow-capped, dragon toothed crags of The Mountains of The Moon and across to the prismatic jewels that are the Kabarole crater lakes set deep in the contours of plunging emerald valleys…..

Eeep! Enough of the snivelling homesickness – back to reality!

I was gazing dreamily out the window this morning, trying to admire the bucolic views and mentally re-arranging the cows in the field opposite when it suddenly occurred to me that I needed a good dose of the bright lights and a big, artsy city. With this in mind, I turned to my husband - who was deeply engrossed in his granny-knicker-pink newspaper - and bellowed in my best operatic Freddy Mercury impersonation ‘BARCEL – ONA!’ Far from being impressed by his lovely wife’s wondrous tonal control, he leapt 30 feet into the air, threw his coffee across the room, scowled ferociously at me and muttered crossly that I’d ruined his favourite tie.

Humpf. So much for my morning. How has yours been?

Update: SEPTEMBER 2010

“Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.”
So far, through the sale of the Armadillo Limited Edition Prints, we have raised $5,326.92 for the Gogos, the orphans and Possible Dreams International - Dr. Maithri's Swaziland Project. Thank you, thank you from the very heart of me. To every single one of you who have reached out with such caring generosity from all over the globe to help build that bridge, I say ngiyabonga. You are all, every one of you, wonderful beyond words. Seriously. xxxx Tessa
Marguerite K, you are truly an earth angel. Time and again you have reached out and touched the hearts of the people of this little nation. Bless you. September 2010: Yet again this amazing lady has helped our Gogos and much of the accolade must to go to her for the fact that we have now reached the $5,000 mark...and still growing! Special grateful hugs to you Marguerite - thank you for your gentle grace.
Many thanks, too, to Caroline (Caroline's Studio) for her contribution to PDI. Dr. M and the Gogos join me in saying a very sincere siyabonga.

Arty Farty News Bites

This is the first full-dress show in Britain for half a century. People who know the legend of the stockbroker turned artist who abandoned his family and took the banana boat to Tahiti for free food and sex, may never have had a chance to see the paintings at all. And even for those who have, there will be revelations: the portrait of Gauguin's sleeping child from Copenhagen, anxious dreams unfurling in the air around him; the spectral riders approaching a cobalt Styx in Moscow's The Ford (Flight); the self-portrait as a vermilion-haired Christ in the garden of olives, flown in from Palm Beach, Florida. This is Gauguin's pictorial imagination at full stretch, the show of a lifetime!