Drawn and coloured during a sleepless night, now being commented after the next vigilant one -- a dark scene really, this thing that I had to do -- but a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.
Pimpernels! Happy colouring colours. A cutesy bird (more sugar!) more like a dove than not. And a nice hangman's knot, which the painter had to tie first to get it right, all those intriguing loops and curls. (And had to untie later, finding it a little tempting.) But there is something liberating, sugarsweetly medicating in the thought that one doesn't have to live really, merely drag along on this Via Dolorosa from bad to worse. This could all end anytime. If one has the possibility -- and does not take it -- life is more of a choice. Or with Nietzsche: The liberating view that Life can be taken lightly, be seen as an experiment, and "not a duty, not a calamity, not a trickery". The manners, the watercolour hues in this otherwise frightening scene (choices are frightening stuff when taken to the bottom) are thus as gentle as possible, hopefully bringing balance; the thought being that in ev'ry job that must be done there is an element of fun and
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way.
Yours sincerely needed some fresh air. Getting the dark dalírium out for a while. We had lovely weather at last, after all the cold showers. And there were the tulips! I thought of adding some colour to them (they were light yellow with reddish streaks, running like lusty, blood-filled veins in the petals) but they should be nice as they are: The pencil. The paper. Period.
Do you possess an Inner Theatre too? -- Tonight: What Could Have Been, a play in three seconds, beautiful but quickly gone. It is staged quite against our will, with no regard for the bitter aftertaste that must follow when Reality comes crushing down. The dream vanishes, or rather, cracks down instantly and painfully like a soap bubble of glass with all the little shards shearing and cutting. And there you are.
It was my friend Marie -- we discussed this subject intensely, and her imagination is actually a tad bit, just a wee bit weirder than mine -- who helped me to find some hope in all this -- solace somehow, here in the shape of stars/flowers. Quite vague and symbolic, true, but there might be as many different kinds of comfort blossoming as there are plays: The child that never was born, the dances that never were danced and having that special someone that you'll never get, etc. etc. This work needed some bright spots that weren't false limelight. (In any crowd, there must be a multitude of these involuntary dream plays going on inside, and we can only show a few.)
And you promise yourself never to think again, dream again, bury down in work and business and routine and whatnot. Chase the actors away, no limelight. Before you know it, however, there's another play coming up with new transient scenes of Could or Should Have Been and longings unfulfilled. And then: Curtain.
More flowers, we need more flowers!
Butterflies: Fluttering dreams, mirages, perfect symbols of transience. I wanted to make the dark butterflies black as sorrow, but it didn't go with the contours so I ended up with a bluebrownish tone instead, lighter than I feel. They are still melancholic and impossible.
I am happy with the pattern on the skirt, a counterweight to the dark butterflies. I wish for more light butterflies in life too.
