When I was a child, we lived in Denmark for a couple of years. For my first birthday over there, my parents gave me a Dutch translation of a volume of stories by Ole Lund Kirkegaard.
This Danish writer was astoundingly good at portraying wisecracking boys surrounded by capricious adults. And his drawings are superb.
Researching the writer just now, I discovered he froze to death at the age of 38 in that very same year, just a couple of weeks after my birthday, 70 kilometres from where we were living at the time.
I remember that winter. It was harsh. We were even snowed in for a couple of days.
Only when I finished this painting (another co-creation with Top4), I realised his story about Lille Virgil had been in the back of my mind all the time. This was my favourite.
Somehow, knowing the writer died not far from where I had just landed as a six year old starting first grade, at the same age as I am now, adds a touch of tenderness to the painting as it gets archived in the bright green cabinet in the left-hand corner of my heart (that's where I keep the co-creations).
Funny how those things work out in my art.
PS Been toying around with a new photo editor - not up to par yet.
Overnight, it turned cold. Frost was in the air and on the surface of the ground. As farmers don't really mind us trampling the empty fields in winter time, and the hardened surface meant we could do so without the little Tops sinking knee-deep in the mud, we finally were able to search the fields near Borger, famous for its large collection of megalith tombs and the enormous amount of flint.
For an hour or so, we stared hard at the ground, picking up all the flint we spotted.
Back home, we rinsed them off and left them by the fire to dry. Top3 even counted them.
240 pieces of flint. Yes, siree.
So, what do we need all that flint for?
Well, Top1 regularly sells the old "flint and steel" combination to re-enactors, archaeologists and history fanatics. (He hopes it'll become trendy one day, as it's easypiecy to make and a real eye-catcher for hip dudes and dudettes.)
Here's another look at the hotties, as portrayed in his Dutch shop:
And as you can see in the video below, this ancient technique for making fire still does the trick...
I've been away on business, which for the most part meant I had to refrain from a certain level of playful perceptiveness. Luckily, for the blog I have many shots in stock like this one.
When spotting this "creature", I remember thinking "What does it see? What does it feel? The sun? The grass? The hestiant promise of frost oozing out of the ground?"
There's a poem in there somewhere, don't you think?
