I had always steered away from going to Venice. I had heard about the smell and how busy it was. Well it happened that I was going to do a cycle trip through the Poe valley, which is wonderfully flat, and discovered that Venice was just around the corner. We bought a wonderful mask there that could only have been worn by a wood nymph to disguise herself from the world and the idea of a series of shots based on this mask began to develop. Emmie was my model for this project, a wonderful young lady who thought the whole thing was great fun and made the  process so enjoyable. The falling leaves in image 4 were painted onto Emmie’s back by the very talented Kat Paine of Belfast City Skinworks. She used water colours  not ink. The panel of four prints, each 6′ x 2′ were exhibited as the final piece in my HND course. I have been back to Venice and on my last trip I tried to find the artist who had made the mask. I found the shop but he was long gone. What I would have paid to get a second mask to keep the wood nymph company.

Wood Nymph