These stunning images that appeared on Clive Hicks-Jenkins artlog this week are photographs of two articulated maquettes that Clive created as a precursor to a full scale painting of Herve and the Wolf. Herve is a Celtic/Breton saint, a folk-saint really, whose story is still alive in certain parts and about whom, because of Clive's interest and prompting, I wrote a poem some time ago. That poem found its way intoThe Book of Ystwyth along with other poetic responses to Clive's work and regular readers may remember that I was delighted to go to the book launch in Aberystwyth a few years ago now and read from my contributions to the book. I'm delighted now that Clive is still using the poem as a jumping off point for his responses to the story and a couple of stanza are quoted alongside these maquettes in the artlog post. For me though, I just can't get enough of the maquettes.. the skin of a saint is always that part which defines both their humanity and their holiness and Herve's skin here just sings against the vivid blue/black of the wolf and his jacket... he doesn't need a halo, his holiness is glowing from within...
