HI, i'm matisse brown, the daydreaming seal

I take in the world through pictures: the ones I see, the ones I imagine and the ones I can sense the shape of. I paint and draw what’s around me, and what I feel inside my heart.

There is a camera inside my mind, and it holds everything I notice: the light and shadows that flicker across the ground, the curve of a shell, the way a wave leans before it breaks. I learn by keeping pictures, and I make sense of the world through them.

My imagination is so big that I find faces and made-up creatures in the cracks of the walls and the creases of the floor. Everything around me is a world waiting to be painted, or an invention waiting to be crafted. 

I sometimes daydream while I laze by the sparkling sea on my Rainbow Rock. I carry my sketchbook every day, drawing and creating until something comes to life. My tail is a paintbrush, so there is almost always a stain of paint on my fur, usually blue, my favourite colour. I don’t let it bother me, because it reminds me that I’m an artist.

I never know where a painting will land, or what it will become. I begin with a single mark, add another, and let each one lead me to the next. The messiest part of a painting can be the most beautiful, and the messiest part of a day sometimes just needs an extra little blob of paint.