It is not often that I know the afterlife of a painting once it is sold from a gallery.

My flower heads project started whilst I was living and working in London. I was fascinated by the need to refresh the flowers in public gardens and parks while they seemed to be still in their prime because the gardeners schedule dictated a plant regime change. Skips and wheelbarrows filled haphazardly with glorious blooms . The picture above was inspired by a similar phenomenon. I worked near Harley Street in London for a long while. Bleep in hand , I could wander the cobbled mews out of hours while waiting for emergencies to call me back to work.

The Mewses of Marylebone are fascinating places. Very famous and or wealthy people live there and use their back lanes as more discrete ways of accessing their homes. They walk their dogs there and have  deliveries delivered. Royalty and celebrities are dropped to the back of prestigious medical clinics for treatments and appointments.  For the subject of this blog, Florists change very posh flower arrangements in homes and Medical Clinics every day. Flowers still beautiful and vivid are tossed into large buckets or skips and dumped. Smart phone in hand I used to take pictures of these crazy juxtapositions of beautiful flowers chucked out with newspapers or take-away food boxes.

Many exhibitions later the smaller paintings had sold. The big one went off to Cotehele. A Mediaeval Dower house in the Tamar Valley

In these auspicious surroundings my painting found its forever home.  Which should be the end of the story. But unknown to me a friend had bought it.

She was somewhat surprised by the size of it as she tried to get it in her car. And even more surprised when she had it in her own hallway.  With only millimetres to spare it snuggled between her picture rail and dado rail . Very much a statement piece.

P.s I popped this painting in the sun to dry. Hugo had a pee close by and was no respecter of wet paint.

It is 17 years since I obtained my Fine Art Degree. A watershed moment in my creative life. Finally achieving the type of degree I wanted, rather than the career based subjects I chose to pursue at 18. Getting what I had always wanted  was not as satisfying as I had imagined. In fact after I got my degree I went through the least creative phase of my entire life. 2 years of not creating any new projects or attending art courses. A very fallow patch. I think I needed it. A Fine Art Degree was not a bit as I had imagined. Luckily in my 2 years of zero creativity I lived in London and could visit museums and art galleries and stock my mind up with all the things that I had been taught to appreciate in real life rather  than from text books. After the 2 year gap I atarted making art again and have been doing so for 15  years. There is a good bit of art stocked up in drawers and files around my home which is why When I needed to illustrate my  blog of yesterday I could find a sketch of a Leviathan from my stash of art work.

Facebook reminded me today. of a large 2 metre by 2 metre painting that I sold about 5 years  ago.

My leviathan is tiny in comparison but with the magic of a digital manipulation app I can put the two together. They sit comfortably together because the mark-making on both is mine and the relative difference in scale has been altered as can the perspective.

The large abstract painting has gone on its own journey, which is satisfying but the poor old Leviathan has been stuck in a folio with no obvious future, other than the tip when I am in my dotage or deceased.

But by playing around with both today he may have a future as a greetings card or a print. The Leviathan in Plymouth Sound is a catchy title…

Something to think about.