I remember as a child, I had to attend Sunday masses. I didn’t like them; it was for me a kind of torment, literally and metaphorically.  Probably I was very afraid to be confronted again and again, by the fearful personifications of God presented by the clerics. I was terrified to be punished for all the sins that I hadn’t committed yet, but would in the future. There was no escape from that. Even the angels had a kind of apocalyptic dimension. When lying in bed, I often thought about my “personal” Angel. I had no doubt about the fact that somewhere an Angel was watching me. I had one big problem. I wasn’t sure if it was a good Angel or a bad one. Maybe it was a hellish one and not a holy one.  I had a picture of an angel hanging above my bed. He was beautiful, with blue eyes and white hair and a very, very distressing smile. And so it was that my Angel was gazing at me, as if he knew that one day I would betray him and leave him. When at the age of 12 I had rebelled and had declared  that “I don’t want to believe and I categorically deny any belief in such a cruel, evil, bad god  and I do not want to be frightened any more of hell, devils and original sin” I had terrible dreams for the first months afterwards. In my dreams I was somewhere close to the church. It was a big Gothic church, and it was always night. I was attacked by devils, they tore me, hurt me; wild winds had jerked me into the square in front of the church, darkness and a terrible fear occupied my dreams.  That was a horrible experience,  a nightmare, but even more it cemented my decision that God, who is haunting me,  punishing me, and scaring me, will not be my god.
And so it happened, that I became somehow atheist, somewhat Buddhist, a follower of my personal faith; all together my religion is a kind of eclecticism.

Since that time I have been trying to avoid that hell on earth, in my daily life, in my relationships with others, but also in my thoughts and feelings. Hell and Heaven, we create them for ourselves, here on this planet, in our lives, our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, hatreds, and in relationships.
Hell and Heaven are also created for us by nature, life, and the condition of being homo sapiens, something that is unavoidable; we can only accept it.

After this very long introduction it is time for introducing my new painting.

This is an installation composed of four panels, titled “Heaven Is In My Mind”. It belongs to the “My Brain” series.
There is a lot of blue, gold, purple, dark plum, grains of all sorts, and recycled stuff.
It is large: 80 cm x 80 cm.

A mouse (plural mice) is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse is of course the common house mouse. But in a case of Lyalls Cottage, the common species are the field mice. They have stood with us in the autumn and winter time and they are visiting us on regular bases every day in the spring, at the moment. Our mice are very keen on expensive chocolate. They also like very much my paintings, especially the ones which contain seeds. Often they are very timid face to face, but not always.
Since mice could be a perfect companion pets I don’t understand why some are so afraid for them. They can be playful, loving and can grow used to being handled. But I admit I didn’t try it with our field mice, no time for it.

The mice have more reasons to be afraid of people than vice versa. Mice are a staple in the diet of many small carnivores. Humans have eaten mice since prehistoric times and still eat them as a delicacy throughout eastern Zambia and northern Malawi. In various countries mice are used as pet food for pets such as snakes, lizards, frogs, tarantulas and birds of prey, and many pet stores carry mice for this purpose. I didn’t hear real stories about mice eating people, till now.

I don’t like them when they are trying to damage my paintings by eating them, but except for that, I like them, actually. In my new painting there is a small image of a field mouse we found in our bath-tub. It was such a small, tiny, frightened little thing. And now she/he is the honourable guest in my painting.
I used acrylics, cd, leaves, seeds, canes, wax and lots of other unusual things. It is a kind of abstract image of Lyalls Cottage and Dunchideock (the village) at this time of the year (Spring).

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