St Catherine Commission

I keep meaning to add things to this blog, but the mood keeps passing and I forget what I wanted to say.

This, however, should have up ages ago. My friend Cylene the Goth is an artist, and creates various things under the name of Zoe Monday. Her blog is locatable here.

I commissioned Cylene to produce an image of St Catherine. She settled for watercolour and, as it turned out, gold leaf on a heavy laid paper. I wasn't sure what she would come out with as part of the point of the exercise was leaving it entirely for her to work her imagination on without any specifications from me. I would not, to be honest, have been surprised by something a little bloody and extreme, but as it turned out the treatment Cylene gave Catherine was very 'straight' and classical. 'I just kept thinking of strength and grace', she said; so the only hint of martyrdom is the tiny line of blood around the saint's neck. The halo forms the wheel (which I like) and you also have the martyr's sword and palm. I haven't found a frame and a place to put it yet and must get on with it (perhaps when this year's chutney is out of the way ...).