Thanks Tom, those comments have been really helpful, they've given me confidence to go with the mask of mary, i've been questioning myself because there is no-one around here who can give me a comment that i feel i can listen to.

Was having more of a look at The drummer boy piece, and I'll reiterate that i think it's very exciting, that doesn't necessarily mean its brilliant but it does mean that there is something in it which makes you want to look at it for longer than just a few seconds. this is what i believe painting has to aspire to, i don't necessarily go with the whole painting should echo life and therefore we should all be producing the throwaway Warhol image. That said, we spoke briefly about beginning to use found images from mags, newspapers etc, in essence, the throwaway image, but i think the way these separate images are organised together should have a considered quality. Using the plethora of imagery that saturates contemporary society is certainly the way forward though. As francis bacon said "using the detritus from the studio floor", that slowly accumulated apparatus of imagery from everyday life, that an artist slowly gathers over a period of time and that has specific yet complex personal resonance.
I think the presence of the drummer boy as protagonist has real contextual clarity, it adds an extra impetus to matisse's dance, that famous symbol of freedom has now soured, the dancers are not free, liberated but in fact under the influence of the 'other'. as the great bob dylan says, everybody's gotta serve somebody!
on another subject, really, how good is Bacon! i can't think of a painter who surpasses him for power of image, others may be level but surely non surpass on a regular basis, and try to think of a painter who is so different from any other and so impossible to base any of your own practice on. he seems to have travelled as far as painting can go down his own personal path, the only way to use him is to back track down the path.