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Don Quixote

Don Quixote

Why does an artist suddenly produce such a painting…and well you might ask.  Well, Don Quixote was originally a painting of a donkey – I played on the word for fun.  I was preparing for an exhibition and was to submit some work in frames and some in mounts only.  I decided to submit the donkey as a mount only, and sent off my entry form with that information.  Being rather busy with a few exhibitions to put together at the time, I inadvertently had the donkey framed.  Oh dear!  I could have contacted the organisers, but felt they had enough to do without the problem of artists who couldn’t sort out their work properly.  So, I decided to creat a new Don Quixote and submit that in a mount instead.  What a great idea, after all the organisers had no idea what to expect for the title in question.  I could have just painted the same picture but it seemed such a waste of time so I decided to research the story of Don Quixote instead.  I didn’t have time to ready the whole book so just read a summary to get the gist and discovered he was ‘honest, dignified, proud and idealistic…as intelligent as he is mad’.  Written in 1606 and seemingly set in that era, we find we have an incredibly interesting, flamboyant character perfect to depict in paint.  I researched men’s fashion of the day and became entranced by the bold and very different styles of breeches.  I felt these in themselves could represent Don Quixote, and then it came to me that with the addition of a cloak being swept confidently over his shoulders he would be fully dressed and ready for his escapades as a knight-errant.  He needed nothing more, and that is why there is nothing more to be seen.

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