The World Was Made For Me

I'm really feeling excited over my most recent painting project! I've began to look to words for my muse. Although I studied plenty of poetry in high school, I only started to really become interested in it a few years ago after watching the historical film, Bright Star, based on the life of John Keats. I've always had a love of words, but I began to discover the beauty and imagery that can be created using words. And recently, I've found poetry to be the perfect platform for illustration- bringing that imagery to life through visual representation. Readers of poetry will most likely have many different images that come to mind when reading, but this painting represents the image in my mind of a poem by A.A. Milne from his book, When We Were Very Young. It's a simple representation, but I love the mood it creates and I hope that it does the poem justice. This poem, The Island, follows below:

The Island

A.A. Milne

If I had a ship,

I'd sail my ship,

I'd sail my ship

Through Eastern seas;

Down to a beach where the slow waves thunder-

The green curls over and the white falls under-

Boom! Boom! Boom!

On the sun-bright sand.

Then I'd leave my ship and I'd land,

And climb the steep white sand. 

And climb to the trees,

The six dark trees,

The coco-nut trees on the cliff's green crown-

Hands and knees

To the coco-nut trees,

Face to the cliff as the stones patter down,

Up, up, up, staggering, stumbling,

Round the corner where the rock is crumbling,

Round this shoulder,

Over this boulder,

Up to the top where the six trees stand....

And there would I rest, and lie,

My chin in my hands, and gaze

At the dazzle of the sand below,

And the green waves curling slow,

And the grey-blue distant haze

Where the sea goes up to the sky....

And I'd say to myself as I looked so lazily down at

the sea:

"There's nobody else in the world, and the world was

made for me."

Expect to see this one in print form very soon...