Flying Girl Leads the Way, 9/24/08
Golden Acrylics and Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pens
I've been thinking about Flying Girl a little, (okay, a lot) and one of the things I realized from doing all these paintings and writing about them and looking at them, is that in reality Flying Girl (me) is not actually alone.
When I first came up with Flying Girl, almost, oh, TWENTY years ago, I was kind of alone. And my creative journeys were often solo journeys. Just me and my journal, you know.
But this is not the actuality of my life any more. And I am not solo. In real life, everywhere I go, I take my two littles. It is almost like the painting depicts and the boundaries between us aren't really there, connected as we are, inseparably.
Someday soon, I know my children will have more independence. They will fly on their own, but right now, they use my wings.
As for the painting of this, I had planned the concept out earlier. I've been thinking also about composition, seeing that I've kind of just been plopping these girls on the paper and seeing what happened, so this time I wanted to have a little more forethought in placement. I don't think I thought real hard about it this time, either, seeing as I didn't know what the horizon would look like.
It's kind of tricky coordinating the concept and the colors and the composition and the lines and the light and the everything. Doing this whole series is making me more aware of how many choices there are in the very simple idea of the Flying Girl Adventures. I'm also looking to challenge myself, and I am getting tired of the blue/yellow color schemes. And the pink is just not satisfying me. I rarely use purple so I thought, what the hey! I didn't plan that part.
In the end, I usually go intuitively, screw the plans. What color do I feel? Once I have a general color scheme down, what new color needs to be added? (This time it was green/yellow.) How does the brush want to be handled, sharp or soft? The horizon is almost always about meaning, an intuitive, mythical, archetypal idea that allows Flying Girl to learn whatever lesson it is that she needs next.
This time, I asked myself, (or was I asking Flying Girl?) where she was leading? And I imagined a long road, up into the mountains. But why would a Flying Girl Need a road? A difficult trip, made easier by flight? Now that I think about it, should I add in a thin, ribbon like road? It is a rather featureless mountain. I might still add a road. I might leave it be. I don't know. It's all a mystery, really until I get there.
Where is there?
That is another question I asked Flying Girl in this painting.
Do you know what she said?
Home.
I had a graduate professor give an exam where the question was one word: home. Of all the tests i ever took, my answer to this is my favorite.
ReplyDeleteI swear Marta, you always make me want to know more! How do you do that? What was your answer?
ReplyDeleteBeautiful, beautiful. I love this. And she most decidedly looks as if she is going Home. She is leading the way with purpose and love. As a mother, I SO get this. I wish I could hang this on my wall!
ReplyDeleteThe question referred to the ten novels we'd read for the semester. My answer took up most of the blue book, so even though the question was explicitly about my own views of home, a lot of those feelings spilled out as I drew out the mentions of home in the novels and the characters' experiences with their sense of place.
ReplyDeleteits beautiful, home is always where I wanted to run when things got strange in my head, then I realised I didn{t know where that was, then I got through that to know that its inside me whereever I am... x
ReplyDeleteCome on kids, keep up...a Peter Pan feel to this one too.
ReplyDeleteI feel the flight, the breeze on the faces, soft, refreshing...love the colors too.