I love painting skies. That is a fairly standard phrase for artists so there’s no new ground being broken there. My approach to skies is to start laying down colors with a very big brush or paper towels, or both (both were used here) with an idea where I’m going but also the idea of not being wedded to my idea. As a result, it usually goes somewhere else, and the trick is to let the paint rest overnight after each work session and come back and see where it is the next day. This ended up here one morning, which really pleased me. The title comes from an early Anne Rice novel about castrati singers in Renaissance Italy which in my own mind is connected to the painting somehow, and is also a title I’ve always really liked (it’s also a very good book, with not a vampire in sight).