170 - Blue Foot 1

When Anne was immobilised by foot surgery last summer, she became trapped into sitting for me every day for 3 months. With her magnificent blue cast stretched out before her, this offered a visual gift for any painter. In a second stroke of fortune, I was able to position her in her chair beneath my 1980s painting of a young girl leaping across the Estuary mud flats in the full glory of her youth. This created a bittersweet composition as my beautiful, leaping niece Maria died last year in her 40s, while Anne and I continue on with the infirmities of age.