A nice little job in a back yard just around the corner from Paul Robeson Street where I lived at the time.
I enquired of the architect who was completing a new building whether I might paint a mural in the foyer, which was modern, sterile and crying out for something garish. No, he said, my sister is painting big butterflies in there - but let's go out to the Japanese garden... (Ah, I thought, this is a Japanese garden; dainty weeds and a ton of white gravel.) So I made sketches developing a naive idea, 'one on one': equalize the sizes of people and animals, thereby 'equalizing' the observer's respect for all of them(!) With an office in Berlin's posh Ku'damm district on the other side of town (hence a decent wage for a change), I was left very much alone to get on with it. Herr Peter's only concern was that the colours should correspond to the garden environs, i.e., nothing garish. So, starting in early autumn, 1999, the colours were pastel, the weather was fine; but I took far too long as usual and the temperature dropped wickedly as it always does, till I was working again in long-johns, anorak, three pairs of socks. Deciding quite late to make the whole thing into a game of association, the 'time-plan' stretched on. Each figure or pair of figures contains an element of another figure painted within a circle (the carrot in the rabbit's belly is actually the seagull's beak). Standing in the middle of the grounds it should be possible to spot a 'clue' and match it to the corresponding figure - perhaps on an opposite wall - and complete the chain visually until all the puzzle-pieces are accounted for. Simple. I did however get extremely confused out there in the cold, living off kit-kats and smoking considerably. I wonder if any of the kids have worked out that the system, if one has ever been spotted, doesn't actually work out?

Hopefully the new plants will flourish as intended to cover completely the ugly lower brickwork. When they reach the figures, a new dimension will be added to the little game of



hide and seek