I’m working on a group of paintings (well, at least a pair of paintings): sleep-walkers, sleep-swimmers, sleep-paddlers caught in the middle of their dreaming when you wander out with a flashlight to see just where they’ve floated off to. To me these paintings are strongly connected with the paintings Cedar Falling and Desert Girl from yesterday’s post.

Today’s painting is a thank-you to artist Peter Doig, whose canvases fill my dreams on a regular basis. Who has painted many canoes, star-flecked skies and pudgy, dancing pine trees.

Thanks is also due to Canadian musician and poet Gordon Downie whose music and lyrics filter into my mind (and heart) on a near-daily basis. The songs Starpainters and Lofty Pines were particularly influential in the making of this painting, and the next painting that I will aim to post tomorrow.

Thanks also to my brothers who pasted the constellations with tiny glow-in-the-dark stickers on their bedroom ceilings growing up. And who continue to dream big, lofty dreams with white paddles flashing with silver…

And here is a detail: