This is Where I Live

My front yard. My backyard.

The backyard painting was actually chosen by the 'Save the Children' charity group as their Christmas card. What I'd give for a box of them. I love the way all those little garages almost too small for one car are at the end of each backyard. I used to have the same kind of view in my own backyard until some idiot three doors down put up a twelve-foot high wooden privacy fence.

As for 'Raking Leaves' (you can see a watercolour of it quite often in the Big Blue Art Gallery at the Forks of the Thames,) - when I encountered this during my first visit to Brian Jones' first one-man show at the old Art Gallery when it was on the second floor of the old downtown library, this is the painting that spoke to me immediately - "You are NOT alone."

About five years later, on my first visit to the study of Herman the German, I was flipping through one of his scrap-books and there was a cut-out of this very same painting. Underneath was Herm's self-penned caption - "The Soul of London."