More Than Meets The Eye

More Than Meets The eye
16" x 20" painted acrylic collage on mat board

Last week while driving I happened to look at the side of the road. All along the fence lines were stands of sunflowers. For some reason that I can't explain, I envisioned a sunflower as a human heart; sort of like if your "emotional center" was actually a flower. 

I held onto that idea for a little while and then added to it. We had a momma quail on our front porch. She had made her nest in one of the flower pots and was sitting on about 10 eggs. It was a bad spot to pick, however. We have had roofers at our house and so there was a lot of noise. I was afraid the mom quail was going to abandon the nest. She was a trooper though and earlier this week her eggs hatched. It was some kind of miracle!

All through the experience though I thought about this quail's instinctive devotion to those eggs. I began to think about what would have happened had her nest been discovered. Would other birds or animals have eaten those eggs? I had learned earlier in the week through some unrelated research that alligators will make their homes underneath trees where birds are known to nest. The alligators want any "dropped" eggs and so protect the birds from predators. The birds in turn supply the alligators with eggs that aren't going to make it, for whatever reason. 

It's a long and drawn out explanation on my part, I know. What I want to illustrate though with all of this is the fact that my mind wandered, made associations, and put several elements together to come up with the above piece. I am not thrilled that I am looking for imagery these days to start a piece since I have had success with just putting down random shapes and then coming up with meaning afterwards. I did realize though in the making of this piece that it is OK to work both ways (and every way in between!). It's fine to follow through with an idea even if it is different from what you normally do. I was not confident about including that crocodile/alligator image but I really wanted to and so I did. I hope the piece reads simply enough and that it is engaging. 

OK, hope everyone has had a productive and creative week. Thanks for reading and let me know what you think via email or FB: [email protected]