There is nothing I like more than to get my teeth into an art project.

Now, I don’t mean one painting. I mean a number of creative elements brought together to illustrate a theme.    

That’s really exciting! And you have to think about it carefully. Artistic planning is great fun!

(And if I sound like a boring person whose idea of fun is making plans, well, I guess I’m a boring person.)

My first such project was my War Piece and it became locally famous because it started life as an inflatable sex doll. (I disguised myself before entering the sex store. How? Well, I took off my hat. Nobody recognizes me without a hat.)

Trust me, when I was finished, this guy didn’t look anything like a sex doll.

Not even close.

I also did one called Mystic Journey. I carved a wizard for that, and bought a horse, a dog, a cat, and a parrot, which I painted in bright colors. Oh yeah, and a crystal ball.

I have done several others, but now I’m about to plan a new one called chaos.

I know I’ve told you about my big, wildly painted mannequin and about my gillie suit. Well, the whole plan starts there.

Because I want to be able to move this piece, I think I’ll get two sheets of plywood, cut them in wild shapes, and frame them with two by fours. Then I’ll put the mannequin, dressed in the gillie suit, on one side, then two easels on the other side. They will hold a huge canvas painting that will be very interesting to do, thick paint, wild colors, bits of fabric and quotes.

In huge letters it will say Typhon, which is the Greek name for the God of Chaos. (That’s where we get our word typhoon.)

Beyond that, I’m still planning, but I think I will cover the plywood with colored gravel (from an aquarium store) and colored sand (from a craft store). Then, since the idea is to express both good and evil, I will mix fake flowers and toy guns all over the gravel.

Here’s another good and evil idea. The gillie suit is made of large netting over waterproof material.

Different-coloured rags are tied to some of the holes in the netting. Now, the whole suit looks very scary and, yes, evil. But what if I tied wonderful silk flowers to some of the other holes? That would make a contrast that would unsettle people! And that’s the idea – good art is always unsettling.

I also just bought five canvas dolls that are wonderful and make beautiful clean slates. They have really long legs and two dots for eyes, otherwise they’re just mildly stuffed canvas. You can do anything with them. And I have some large wooden letters to play with, too.

Then there are tarot cards, for the future, and big, heavy books for the past, maybe some interesting rocks.

As you may have noticed, the problem isn’t finding ideas, it’s selecting just the right ones.