[Garth Herrick]

Oh Michele,

I was afraid that title topic would come up to haunt me. The painting from 10 years ago was "Apotheosis of the Chunnel" which was really a rather arbitrary and mindless title. I was reading about the completion of the English Channel Tunnel (Chunnel), and I visualized the stretched out boy bridging the edge of the pool to the edge of the grass, with his mother's legs completing the bridge. It seemed a metaphore for the Chunnel to me. When I was sculpting Leonardo da Vinci's Horse a few years earlier, Capt Dent (who financed the Horse) was always extolling the apotheosis of this and the apotheosis of that, and the word just grew on me. So I needed a different title for the new version of the painting and Apotheoun seemed to work because the paintings are related. I did not want a more descriptive tiltle like Mother (or Madonna) and Child. Besides, when we all paint our portraits, are we not deifying our subjects somewhat?