Opening with Kites

When I first began to be unblocked again about my art, I couldn't deal with a blank page. The idea of doing a painting or a drawing - even a sketch - was too much. Too serious. For that annoying litle voice inside of me, artwork comes with the expectation of a certain level of success or ability, and I was not ready to listen to my own censor on that level.

So I started daydreaming about kites. I first thought of a bright orange fantail goldfish. That kite went on to show up in some of my first recent paintings, once I get that far, but I haven't made an actual kite of a goldfish, yet. Then I bought some beautiful bright yellow wrapping paper, and some sticks and string, and I made the first kite in yellow. Before I stretched it on the frame I drew a cat on it, and then painted the background with white acrylic house paint.



For the kite's tail I decided to make a mouse. On one side the mouse is unaware of the cat - but on the flip side of the mouse medalion the mouse will see the cat. When we flew this kite, on a frigid windy day last March, the mouse spun quickly under the cat and it looked like a flip-book movie. Beneath the mouse was a cheese, mentally continuing the storybook foodchain.

I made a bighorn sheep kite, later, but was never as pleased with him. He's on my website's "silly" page, along with these photos of the cat and mouse.