Chimera Book 1 / Chapter 8 – The Moppet-Drover
It’s always exciting when artist, Phil Cooper sends me his new Chimera-themed paintings, not least because Phil has complete freedom in terms of which elements within each chapter he focuses on. For this week’s painting, Phil has chosen an image of the young evacuee mentioned by Atticus Weft, when the sock-serpent explains how he first became a willing accomplice to the dark deeds of villainous Madame Chartreuse. Seeing Phil’s image of this abandoned little boy gave me a little thrill, for while this particular character is but a footnote in Chimera Book 1, he won’t always remain so as Kyp’s adventures in Chimera’s realm of lost properties continue…
“So, this week’s image is terribly sad; a little boy who is alone and frightened. We’re not told much about this boy. He’s just mentioned in a couple of lines by Atticus near the end of chapter 8, but those couple of lines speak volumes. They go to the heart of the book for me; that abandonment, either real or imagined, can be catastrophic for children. We see a lot of stories at the moment of children separated from families due to war and conflict. There must be countless horrors that are happening every day to these children and nobody will ever know. They will be forgotten.”
Phil’s ‘evacuee’ painting in development on his art table in his Berlin studio, October 2020
Red's Kingdom 