Creating the last canvas.

Above are the pictures from the final stage of making the final canvas. I had been wearing the canvas and dragging it about for a few days before this stage so my partner had seen the canvas, it was smelly and damp, muddy and invasive, a kind of jealousy had formed between it and him, it had taken a lot of my time and attention away from us. I took the canvas to the woods to lay it out and find a perfect space in nature for the ceremony. I found a beautiful patch where the blue bells and wild garlic met, on a small flat area on an otherwise steep woodland bank. I placed the pigments, offerings of flowers and incense in place and waited for my partner to arrive. We undressed, kissed, it was like introducing my mistress to my partner, i had to give them time to get to know one another. We made a blessing together (see video) played a Tibetan bowl, lit some frankincense, shared a glass of wine, and began to rub and paint the different pigments, dyes and flowers over each-others bodies. it was a very intimate, playful and magical moment. This part of the process seemed very significant, a time to acknowledge not just our partnership, but the space we were in, the mark we were about to make on the landscape, our love not just for each-other but the natural world we inhabited. Fast forward half and hour or so and there we were, panting, totally lost in the moment, covered in a mix of dyes and pigments, we stayed in this attitude for a few hours, enjoying the freedom of being naked outside, the sound of the birds, the light, the joyful coloring of our bodies. Finally the canvas was covered in a liner and rolled up to insure the colors stayed as they were before being taken into the studio space. I would like to do this again, perhaps even larger, perhaps over the course of a summer. More ritual, more nature, bigger, much bigger, more expansive.