Oil on linen, ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

It took me many years to build the fortitude to reinterpret Velasquez’s great painting from 1656. In the original, the Infanta Margarita of Spain stands between her two maids of honour, Doña Isabel de Velasco and Doña María Augustina Sarmiento, who curtsies to the little princess as she offers her a selection of strange gelatinous objects. The infanta is either viewing herself or photographing that which stands before her. On the right stands dwarf, Mari-Bárbola and a rabbit with a hula hoop wearing clothing borrowed from Degas’ ballerinas. The sleeping bull mastiff has been replaced by a curious green serpent. In the original painting, the king and queen of Spain reflected in a mirror at the back of the room have been replaced by the demon Molek, hauntingly depicted in the last remaining photo of two of the victims of the Luna Park Ghost Train fire in 1979. The figure on the far left is me, photographing the scene in preparation to paint this image.