Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Flying Girl in the Hat and the Cat, or Bedtime Story

Flying Girl in the Hat and the Cat, or Bedtime Story
10/20/08
Golden Fluid Acrylic.

I am a strange one. It has struck me anew as I have been painting my little Flying Girls. Why strange, you ask? Sometimes I feel very contradictory. How can a be an antimaterialist at the same time that I am fasion and style obsessed? How can I be both a spiritual searcher and a pop culture junkie? How can I be a perfectionist and an utter slob? How can I be an artistic snob, and yet fully welcoming of all artists at all stages of their development? Can I write literary fiction that is Science Fiction and still make it fun? Sometimes these contradictions don't seem to make sense to me... or rather, they kind of do, but I wonder how other people take them. I've been called both "fancy" and a hippie. Can you be a fancy hippie? I've been called too stubborn and wishy washy. I am both terribly anti-social and the one who won't ever shut up.

Sometimes I wonder if my Flying Girls can still journey towards enlightenment while dressed in fabulous chapeaus and ballet slippers.

I wonder these things and then move on. Because I am these things, so there is no paradox. We really are such a multitude inside of us, that there should be no worry about our differing and sometimes contradictory loves, habits and tastes. I'm sure if you were to make a character for each personality trait and put them in a room together, they would make one interesting party... even if they didn't always like each other. I think it's called "complexity" anyway. And if it isn't, that's a much nicer word than "weirdo."

This FG came to me while I was reading Dr. Suess' The Cat in the Hat to my kids at bedtime. Maybe I was on the stripes theme. It's interesting how often fashion is inspiring my painting choices, lately. But the lesson is there, too. The whimsy in the stripes, the little kitty being dragged along to what might very well be a party in that house around the corner.

Or perhaps they are going home to bed. Or perhaps they are off on their nighttime adventures into wonderland. Or maybe they are going to put on a ballet of Cat in the Hat and there is no bedtime involved at all. Degas' ballerinas were one of my first artistic influences. I had a print hanging in my bedroom when I was a little girl and loved it so very much.

Maybe this painting goes along with the contradictions. She is so many things and they can barely be pinned down. And there's no need to pin them down. Maybe she is simply falling/floating into dream land, and in her dreams she learns something about whimsy, childhood, dreams, happiness, dancing... and just enjoying life as it comes.


Alien Sketch
10/20/08 The Big Draw #20
Golden Acrylic and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens

Maybe her next stop will be in this faraway land. Don't ask me, I don't know where it came from. Perhaps I was influenced by the science fiction novel in my head. Oh I know I was, but the landscape started showing up before I made the connection.

See. Listen to your subconscious. Sometimes it pulls together two (or more) seemingly separate pieces of your identity into one.

Do you have some pieces of you rattling around in there that might like to go dancing together, like kitty cats and ballerinas? Or Science Fiction novels and the leftover gray paint from yesterday's FG? Fashion and zen?

12 comments:

  1. Anonymous2:41 PM

    It has been such a cupcake treat to watch you take to the air, so to speak, with such fluent flair nearly every day and every where and although I don't mean to sound Suess-ish, it is the truth-ish!

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  2. i'm dropping in again to tell you how inspired i think/feel your flying girl series to be... it seems as if an endless source of colour and imagination and personal/more than personal storytelling- yet open for individual interpretation- is taking form in an on-going dialogue with your unconscious ( and the tv, is seems ) which is really relevant to especially being a woman, mother, artist, searcher, finder, dreamer, muse, portal, voice... i can't even say how much i'm touched, and although it's clearly also about me and where i am in finding reflection in my own artistic journey, i do think you have something to share with the world (that sounds so grandiose but why not?) i see them (FG paintings, each as a word or a sentence or a song or a snapshot ) fully covering walls as a storybook opened and enlarged for everyone to step into.
    i would come and enter the 3-dimensionality of this world... perhaps there's a sister/cousin to FG in my unconscious and she's getting ready to come out.
    thanks so much for your work.

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  3. Anonymous4:15 PM

    What a wonderful post! Don't you just gotta love all the contradictions. And as always FG is flying in style.

    The new series looks like it be interesting too. Keep it up (whoever you are)!

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  4. Are you a Gemini? One of the mercurial twins? Opposing sides of the same whole? Me too.

    This is my fave FG yet. It made me smile the minute the image popped up.

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  5. Anonymous6:02 PM

    I don't see why we can't be stylish and enlightened. Besides for plenty of people being unstylish is still obsessing about appearance. I like pretty clothes--why should this hold me back if I'm not ruining my credit and my life for them?

    You don't seem weird. You seem creative and productive--which is weird in some circles but so what? We can always go to another circle.

    As always, I'm loving Flying Girl.

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  6. Wow. You voiced many of my thoughts. I want to be responsible, but I also want to see Broadway plays. I want to be non materialistic, and yet I still salivate over some beautiful Dior glasses.

    I guess either extreme is no good.

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  7. Rowena! This is fantastic "Big F,little f...what begins with "f" Fancy, footloose flying-girl and her fluffy feline friend" ( you must have the Suess alphabet book)

    Love what you said too. But why be the same everyday, I really can't decipher who I am either. Paint a new picture of yourself whenever you want. If you are happy on the inside it will show and work magic on the outside, Bee random girl...it is much more interesting. The only "label" you need is "Rowena"

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  8. Back again. I got tagged my first time ever today so now I am sharing the love and tagging you! See my post for details!

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  9. Very nice - I love the whimsy in this - and the background is wonderful!

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  10. Anonymous8:36 AM

    saw your comment on Creative Thursday..I think in general what she is talking about is true...there is an awful lot of sugar coated comments flying around blog land that are just not genuine and it is getting stale. We all know it and are just now being realistic about what we are reading. There is just a yearning for people to be real in their posts and their comments! I agree with what you said too.

    enjoy your creativity...being an artist is wonderful!
    best,
    carol

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  11. I think we are all made up of many parts and sure you can be a fancy pants one day and a hippie the next. Why not? I'm sure glad you can appreciate art by those in the early developmental stages, (like I am), and appreciate great works of art as well. Again, why not?
    This is a delightful flying girl in her Dr. Suess hat! Cat I am, green eggs and Sam... why not?

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  12. Aliens. So fun that the trees, the dog have the spaceship shape too. Just wondering why isnt it a paradox? To me a paradox is the holding of two or more apparently contradictory elements at the same time. At the same time as I am sweet, i am also nasty. Well all those examples you gave.

    After 63 years of observing people and listening to them talk, watching behaviors etc I have drawn the conclusion that in experiential reality (as opposed to idealize visions of life in our minds) everyone is a big bundle of contradictions.

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I'd love to hear your thoughts, small or large. It all adds to the conversation.