Life is a journey. Choose well those with whom you travel.

An adapted version of something that someone called Lorraine Heath once wrote.(Don't ask. There aren't enough hours in the day...)

By Walter David Pullen

Sometimes, you don't choose but it just happens. More of my synchronicity.

Let me check WAAAAAAAAY back in my blogs...

Yes, Monday, December 12th, 2011. (You need to look at this blog...) (and then click the back arrow on your tool bar to come back here!)

Daria Kudla (look at more of her fantastic work here people) and I have been virtual friends from that day. I bought, from her, a print of my favourite picture. It has pride of place on my stairwell wall.

Last night, we met (actually not virtually) for the first time, since she's moved from Berlin to London - though it didn't feel as though it was the first time.

Following my serendipitous talk with the animator the day before, I handed her the wolf story - working title...(changes by the minute)...Little Red Riding Hood and the Granny Confusion...and she likes it and asks 'How do you want me to illustrate it?'

I'm so honoured.

I've chosen well!

The secret of life is in art

More Oscar Wilde.

Some Caroline Coxon - how life-affirming art can be and I want to know why. Not why in general, but why a particular piece of art grabs me by the throat and the heart and the soul and makes me feel ALIVE. Dangerous territory. Welcome, amateur psychologists everywhere.

This is the piece that did it, discovered by accident yesterday when I was looking for Andrew Wyeth images.

It's called 'Winter is coming, dear Red Riding Hood,' and it's by an artist called Daria Kudla.

 She was born in Poland in 1982, lives in Berlin, where she also works as a technical translator AND, in her profile she writes, "I love spending free time with horses and poetry, " - so she must be okay. Anyone who spends time with horses invariably IS. In fact, here is her self portrait:

 ...but it's the Little Red Riding Hood I love, above all. Why? I suppose apart from the beauty of the image, it's the subverting of a fairy tale - something which I've just done with the same story (mine's called There is no wolf) The wolf as victim, as heroine, as protectoress...


I hope I can buy a print.

And now I have TWO dreams. That There is no wolf  is taken up by a publisher and that Daria Kudla will be commissioned to illustrate it.

And this has always been a favourite quotation of mine (by George Bernard Shaw):

“You see things; and you say, 'Why?' But I dream things that never were; and I say, 'Why not?'”

Why not?