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?