THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 7th FEBRUARY 2021: DAY 315

'The Constant Library',  Volume XVI:
"The Skeleton's Holiday, Leonora Carrington."

'The Constant Library',  Volume XVI: "The Skeleton's Holiday, Leonora Carrington."

"The idea for 'The Constant Library' follows on from a recent conversation considering which books had, and continue to have, the greatest affect my life in a variety of different ways. These are the books I can't live without and whenever possible I have a copy of with me wherever I travel in the world; my 'Constant Library."

Today has been very much a research day, so it seemed like an appropriate time to return to The Constant Library.

The Skeleton's  Holiday is, for several reasons, an ideal book for inclusion in The Constant Library. The first reason is obviously because of the wonderful, surreal qualitities of the short stories included in this collection. Leonora Carrington may be better know to most people as a Visionary surrealist painter (which is the second reason for the book's inclusion in the library) but when you begin the read her fiction you realise where the imagery in her paintings evolves from. Or perhaps it was the other way around? I suspect that, as with most fertile imaginations, Carrinton's creativity was almost boundless allowing all the areas of her output in influence and be connected to each other. This is the way that I tend to work (my third reason for the book's inclusion) from painting to sculpture to installation, which makes me very appreciative of both the qualities and difficulties of such a practice.

There is actually a forth reason for the book's inclusion in the constant library, which may in some ways be small, but in a way this size is significant; this book is published as part of the series of Penguib Moderns, which are both very affordable, and more importantly as part of The Constant Library, pocket sized.