Sky.

Have you ever been to Malmaison, just outside Paris? The day we did I fell in love with the ceiling in Josephine's bedchamber. I have a bit of a thing for the sky so for years after I coveted a glimpse of it in our bedroom - admittedly without the tent like drapery and overwhelming use of gilt which would look delusional in our house: 

Yet where in Hobart do you find an artist to trompe l'oeil your bedroom ceiling a la Malmaison? Luckily, the heavily trompe l'oeiled French restaurant Le Provencal is just around the corner in Macquarie Street. We have been dining there for years and years and years pretending we were in the French countryside because of the convincing view out of the window. We had dinner there the night Felix was born and when we used to wag Thursday night Adult Ed French classes Julie would make us order our dinner.......in French.

So, if you are after trompe l'oeil then Peter Gouldthorpe is the man. I was initially embarassed about asking him to paint the sky on our bedroom ceiling. Yet then remembered he must have had much stranger requests having heard stories about him painting a full length portrait of Camilla Parker-Bowles in another Hobart house.

This is what our ceiling looks like now:

On Sunday mornings we all point out what we can see in the clouds. Tobes is convinced there is a kangaroo with a joey on it's back.

And the sky is always blue.