An enchanted evening…how else can I explain it? I saw this photo on Facebook in the morning and had the painting finished that evening in less than four hours.

This photo breathes inspiration. I couldn’t help myself. Good thing my husband encourages me. I promised him that I would make sure the dishes were done first – not because he wanted that, but to assuage my guilty feelings about painting every spare moment.

A word that came to mind as I painted was “facade”. But when it came time to paint the eye, I realized the subject was Eustace. The eye would have a bit of a “dragon-like” look to it, and this peeling away of scaling on the face would represent Eustace’s transformation from a dragon back into a boy, from the C. S. Lewis book “Voyage of the Dawntreader“.

I didn’t read the C.S. Lewis series of Narnia until I was an adult, after my first husband had died. The story of the Dawntreader became my favourite, because the story of Eustace’s redemption was so painful, poignant and triumphant. Recently I watched the new movie depicting this story, and loved it. The only thing it lacked (I’m sure this was due to time constraints and because it is a movie for children), was more time and visual on the transformation of Eustace back into a little boy. The book took it’s time with this, and  Eustace suffered a great deal.  As he transformed, I wept.

The “Dawntreader” is meaningful to a lot of people I know, including my friend Tim Plett, who named his photography business after the name of the ship in this book.