But there was something creeping towards my brain, like a crack creeping across fatigued metal or a stalactite growing downwards to meet a stalagmite. Nature was getting boring because it was nature. Soon I laid limp on a cloud, my former magic drained, unsure of how to live. I was there for a whole month… no, not a hunger strike, yes, it was me trying to chart future directions. The green tint in my eyes faded away, leaving a drab grey. Everything blurred before me, the variegated forests and houses reduced to their hues, their boundaries swirling and straightening into solid black lines as psychedelics would leave me. Eventually I lost my wings even though I had them and the cloud caved in, starting my tumble into oblivion… only to be saved by a kind farmer who gave me some corn. By then, though, my idea of art had been devastated; no longer did I deem clean lines and primary colours as base and degraded. Rather, I saw them as everything, from the tiniest sparks of a unicorn filly to planets, galaxies and even the infinite realm of quantum mechanics which was all the vogue back then. That was a new nature, truly infinite and thought-provoking, and I’ve been painting in this form ever since. My first work after returning home, of two white lines and three red fields, became my cutie mark.