Gaye,

I did go to Appleby Fair, and I plan to go again this year! What a raw, remarkable place Appleby is in June. Regarding the horses, since I was a tiny mite dropping off trees onto horses, they have been a part of my life and scribbling them onto every scrap of paper I could find or molding them out of garden clay was part of my early training. Nowadays, when they appear in my work, they are symbols for things beyond the obvious image.

When younger sister Elaine died, I could not paint for a while until I decided to paint 'my pain'. I felt she had been robbed of most of her adult life and so decided to paint the four seasons for her. On four gold canvases (representing the power of love behind everything), I started with Autumn (she is in a shroud), then came Winter (a time of pregnancy & rebirth when all seems lost), then Spring (when I thought of our times together) and finally the Summer and she, escaping the bounds of earth. In this decision to feel everything, and not actually choose anything but let the images, colours and shapes come up, I mourned her appropriately and felt that, in the end, I could paint again. A new way of expressing myself was born during this process. I often sign these paintings "Maya" which is the name my daughter calls me, rather than Humphrey, for I believe they are very different and from a different place......If you know what I mean.