'Kindred Spirits' and inspiration

I’ve been working on something on and off for the last year and I'm not sure where it's going. At the moment there's a plan for a series of work called ‘Kindred Spirits’. The ideas are loosely connected to the concept of kindred spirits and also the idea of daemons such as in the Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’. The trilogy had a huge effect on me because reading them reminded me what it felt like to read as a child. The books asked the kind of questions that both children and philosophers ask - how and why we exist and where we go afterwards. Pullman's daemon is the soul's physical manifestation in the form of a creature which represents consciousness, acting as an inner dialogue and therefore a conscience. 

Work-in-progress for Kindred Spirit (drawing 1)

My first image is of a girl with the head of a rather vicious looking wolf on her head. Parallels with Red Riding Hood may come to mind, although there are many readings of that tale that don't really interest me here. Instead I prefer the view of the Native Americans, who consider the wolf to be the highest spiritual teacher of all animals. The wolf is a symbol of strength, loyalty and protectiveness. In "His Dark Materials" the daemon (until adolescence) can shape-shift into an animal which most reflects the emotions,situation or wims of its human.   

            Kindred Spirit (Drawing 1)

These are just some of the concepts and ideas which are running around inside my head for this particular work but how they are interpreted is entirely up to the viewer - please feel free to post comments, Angela x