I love stories involving art, particularly painting. I don't really know why, but books like Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and the more recent "Portrait of Mrs Charbuque" by Jeffrey Ford, have always intrigued me. So "Painting with Ichor" came about as a sort of "monkey see monkey do" experiment. I came across the concept of ichor (god's blood) in a book of Greek mythology I was reading and was instantly fascinated by it. I combined the concepts of painting and divine blood and had the idea for the story.

If I had to say what "Painting with Ichor" is "about" I would suggest, more than anything, it is about escapism. I've never bought that science fiction, fantasy, or any other category of fiction is escapist. Clearly, when a reader goes into a text, he or she may be intending to escape the real world, but the fact is that they don't and they can't. All literature, including speculative fiction, is referential. A secondary world can't exist unless you have experienced your primary reality beforehand.

As surreal as Clifton's paintings are, they all reference reality; this includes the one he jumps into. He may want to escape his grim reality for a more idyllic one, but what he wants doesn't matter.

His dream world can't exist on its own, without reality to "frame" it, so to speak. Cervantes hasn't escaped reality at all. The harsh facts of reality just cannot allow his new world to exist. Even if he wanted to, Cervantes can't escape the world he is trying to escape from, but he is deluded enough to think he can — I named him Cervantes in a less than subtle reference to that writer's great deluded character, Don Quixote De La Mancha. He is at once similar and very different to Don Quixote though. Clifton recognises the world for what it is, and deludes himself into thinking that he can escape it, whereas Don Quixote deludes himself in not recognising the world for what it really is.

Brother Hadrian however, is painfully aware of reality. Indeed, his whole journey to and from The City is carried out solely because his order needs Clifton's money to survive. The "real life" concerns of his religious order are intentionally paralleled with Cervantes and his desire to escape such concerns.

The original ending just had Hadrian leaving, without destroying the painting, but then I realised that having him burn it would be much more effective. I think the point I was trying to make with that change was that, sooner or later, any attempt at escapism will be defeated by reality, no matter how much you try to preserve the illusion. Bleak? Perhaps…but I think it may be a pertinent point to raise.

  — Matthew Doyle, November 2006