A new favorite -

"The Bathing Cap"
digital collage by Mick Mather

As we toil away in our studios, turning out work after work, we're often confronted with a piece that stands so far above the rest that it makes every failure worthwhile. It's a choice we make, be it objective or subjective, answerable to personal aesthetic alone. This is one of those pieces for me, created towards the end of March 2008, just as Spring Fever was beginning to overtake me. At the time, the weather was still cold, too cold to post a swimsuit image, so I tucked it away for just the right time. Today seems to be it as we move well into the temperatures of our imminent summer, plans for beach vacations or a backyard bar-b-que next to the swimming pool. It hasn't escaped me that the colors here are very cool and I'm not yet convinced that this was due, as just mentioned, to the time of year that it was created. It could be the odd coincidence of getting 80-degree weather concurrent with gray and cloudy skies.