I was reunited with some long lost photos of an “old friend” recently – a Fender Stratocaster guitar I had the pleasure of painting!  About five years ago I was asked to re-paint an old electric guitar which had been well and truly “rocked to pieces” with very little of the original paint remaining and very badly scratched through to the wood – in fact, it looked a lot like one of the “Rory Gallagher” tribute fenders which are now available.  It looked to me like it should be thrown in a skip, but I was told it was a very valuable original Fender “Strat” and to keep it safe.  The person I was dealing with turned out to be the agent for a musician who had a large collection of expensive guitars – he had been out for a stroll one Sunday and happened to see some of my paintings on display in Merrion Square Dublin – apparently he liked what he saw and so he got “his people” to talk to “my people” – well only me actually!    My brief was was to create my own images of Jimi Hendrix and then using the guitar as a blank canvas create a unique design.  It took me quite a while between researching, preparing and priming the guitar and finally getting it professionally coated in several layers of automotive “2Pak” laquer.   The photos I took of it afterwards remained on a memory stick which unfortunately went missing until last weekend when I was cleaning out an old cupboard.  Originally I had a whole collection of photos showing the work in progress, however, these are the only ones remaining of the finished product.  I never did find out who the owner was or where the “Strat” is now – sometimes it’s nice not knowing the full story – so its nice to think what might have been -  maybe it was played by some famous hands during it’s life – just maybe!