This portrait was painted a few years ago and I have put it here because I have been too busy meeting deadlines to make a new one for you and the last time I drew a new portrait was last Friday. I got quite merry on the demon drink and did three excellent fresh and lively pen portraits of three friends of mine and gave them away on the spot so there you are...
My bed was a wire wove with a kapok mattress with a hollow made by my skinny young body curled up in the foetal position with my hands together, as in prayer, under my soft pillow.
The bedroom was a dark and dangerous place that in the night became all of space with looming shapes of planets and stars and stuff that stretched out into distances all around so far as to be too scary to imagine.
My bed was my spaceship and as long as I had the covers up and over my ears with my eyes shut and just the very tip of my nose sticking out I was safe, yeah, and warm. Being safe was a special feeling, delicious with danger because if any part of me bar the top of my head and the very tip of my nose were out of the bed covers then I was exposed to the unimaginable rushing extremities of endless space in every direction, dark, cold, vast vacuum and ominous dark planets here and there behind any of which could be lurking the Monsters...
There were three monsters any one of which could get me any time the bed covers slipped as sometimes happened and I had to be quick to cover up they came so fast! Like that ! one of them would be there by my bed! Woah! And I could sense them lurking behind dark shapes of planets or flying far off through space but always ready to swoop if my space ship opened the tiniest crack...
One was a ghost, big and blurry, one a ferocious huge eagle and the worst was a monster too horrible to picture but thick and lumpy like a giant without legs and powerfully strong in the worst possible way and they could all fly at lightening speed to get me!
So much for the dangers without, in the cold vastness all around but I lived safely within my warm bed space ship and in there I had all I could ever need to keep me happy forever!
Yes! in my space ship I had my supplies and plenty of them, a toaster and bread and butter and peanut butter and a knife to spread the butter and peanut butter on the toast and also big stacks of drawing pads and pencils and pencil sharpeners so I could draw anytime, anything I wanted to draw.
This was my life and my means and reward for living, every night in my warm bed in my cold bedroom and I would draw and draw and munch on toast and peanut butter traveling always through space and keeping myself safe till morning.
Thursday morning, last day for framing and painting, tomorrow will be all day setting up the exhibition in the Waihi Memorial hall and we open to the public Saturday morning.
