Fall still life plus a little magic

I have been on rocky waters emotionally lately and I needed to do some art that I was less invested in, so I put together this still life, using some items I happened to have around the house. As I gathered the objects I began to imagine the life these objects might represent. A fictitious witch like the ones found in the Harry Potter books (which I love), comes home and dumps her shawl, a pumpkin from her garden, into a basket in the entry hall of her cozy home. She has been thinking of what she will do with her pumpkin and a little magic spills out of her mind without her notice, and gets dumped out of her hat when she sets it down on top of the basket. Some of this magic settles on the pumpkin, and some is carried by a draft as she lights a fire in the hearth. 

This little narrative started cloudy when I sat down to paint, a vague idea about the person and the setting. It becomes more clear as I work, I can’t yet see the magic, I just have a hint of it at the back of my mind. 

I was excited to get it to this point, and soon posted it to my social media. It was a quick exercise, and I was pleased with how it came out. As you can see this image is pretty different from the actual finished piece. After I posted I I showed the painting to my husband, and he could not identify the hat as a hat. I couldn’t really believe it, I saw the hat, I painted the hat, of course it is a hat! My experience with the painting ingrained the image in my mind as a hat so firmly, I had a hard time believing that someone else’s experience with my piece could be so different from mine. 

S o I reached out to an artist group I am a part of on Facebook, and sure enough, it was not easy to identify the hat as such. I felt a bit embarrassed, my anxiety over social media felt validated (shut up anxiety, I am SO over you!). But thinking about it, I also realized how this experience is paralleled in the real world. How often to we dismiss someone else’s experience because ours has been so different? And the wars in the comment sections of articles and social media posts confirms that it is really difficult for anyone to recognize that it is possible for two people to have different experiences with the same thing. It is through the lens of our personal beliefs and experiences that we view life and form convictions. We are often unaware that our experiences have the power not only to clarify our view of life, but also to distort.

 

So I had to get back in my studio and see if I could add a bit of clarity to my work. Swallowing my pride and accepting the critique I received has given so much more clarity to my vision for this piece.