Finally, here it is.. 'The Fairy Tree'

Finally after 6 months of development on and off, it's here! The fairy tree was painted in the strangest way for me... Usually I plan the whole composition from start to finish. But not this painting - it took on a mind of it's own!

'The Fairy Tree' by Sonia Finch

From the outset, I painted it freely, building up the night sky and background knowing that I wanted distant hills and trickling waterfalls, and an enchanted forest - everything that was magical to me. But then, when I started working on the fairy oak tree, I loved the vastness of the empty space.

So the tree was left isolated this way for a while whilst the tree filled up with lots of fairy folk, elves, dwarves, wizards and witches going about their evening and of course many woodland creatures that I had found in my earlier nature spirit paintings.

I was reminded that there was supposed to be an enchanted forest. So tentatively I painted it in, and as always she was right because you can't have willow-the-wisps without a forest! At my 9 year old daughter's insistence there came a unicorn - and she was right too.. Out of the corner of my studio I spied some moths darting around and of course the elves were racing them into my painting, so that was that.

I guess the biggest challenge I had was having such a large (AO) canvas, and having to paint so much detail within it with a fine paintbrush. I was creating a world. I kept finding holes and burrows and places where life dwells and could have gone on and on... I imagined how a child would feel falling asleep in their bedroom hating the dark, but finding themselves lost in this world as they fell soundly asleep.. I imagined how the tree would continue to glow in the dark so that all the fairies could see it from miles around. Finally, my pot of fairy dust arrived and after much experimentation, the little world began to glow in the dark... Isn't it wonderful to see the world through a child's eyes!