Acrylic and graphite on paper, mounted on canvas (est late 1990s)

Size: w 16″ x h 10″ x d 1.75″

Many years ago, years before she died in 2007, my mother asked me to illustrate her poem for children about a dragon coming to visit (actually to stay indefinitely) uninvited. The dragon represented to her the crippling, painful illness which had changed her life dramatically; she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 59.

My mother herself created lively pen and ink drawings for the poem and in the end my detailed, somewhat fastidious, paintings were not what she had envisioned. The project eventually stuttered but in the meantime I put together a sequence of images to go with the several verses. I have decided now to “publish” them on this blog (a new page yet to be set up) alongside the text of my mother’s poem.

The painting featured here is the first in the sequence. The first verse of “A Dragon Has Come To My House” by Pauline Johnson goes as follows:

A dragon has come to our house

He’s come to stay

He’s found that creepy corner,

In the basement, eh!

The corner where the sump pump

Sits in a pail of goo

And he says he isn’t leaving

Whatever shall I do?