Some years ago a mysterious boy appeared in an oil painting of mine. Although there is shown only a glimpse of an eye through the leaves, I recognised him immediately as being a recurring character I had come across in my dreams for many years.

At the time I had been meaning to get out some sketches of this boy, but instead chose to work on a different artistic project altogether, the aforementioned oil painting. Not one to be ignored, he made his appearance there instead.

It was then that I started out on what I believe is often one of the strangest kinds of journey we can take, in which a person comes to find out something they already knew... a something somewhere in the recesses of the unconscious mind, which works to influence our daily lives, helping shape and frame our experiences, whether we are aware of it or not. I started to dig, instinctively searching out art and writing on the boy God Apollo, starting with the chapter devoted to him in Germaine Greer's The Boy.

I read everything I could find even remotely related, refreshed my memory of the myths and visual depictions thereof. I knew all this, all of these things I was reading. I had read them many times before. But now I was starting to make real, tangible connections; seeing the patterns and their significance as applied to my own life, my own experiences, and my own story. It is much like "discovering" a song which had somehow managed to pass by unnoticed for so long on an album we have loved and listened to repeatedly.

It took a lot of further exploration by the way of books I filled with sketches of faces, individual features and a couple of disastrous attempts at painting him before I was finally able to build up an image which best represents to me the idea of Apollo I hold. This boy traversing all the worlds of my mind. The one I know.

By Katrina Sesum

Whispering Tree

Katrina lives in Yorkshire, with two dogs who are not as daft as they'd have you believe.

She paints full-time, drawing her inspiration from folklore, mythology and the woodlands and fields by her home.

Katrina has been a member of Enchanted Folk since September 2007

members.enchantedfolk.com/kae