things to come

my dear friend turned me on to the strawberry swing video by coldplay. as a kid who did not grow up with cable, thus, sadly no addiction to MTV, music videos are still not part of my daily consciousness. yes i was a child of the 80's. yes i had short-lived experiments with blue eyeshadow and hairspray. but we missed thriller's debut, aha's take on me, madonna's material girl. my sister and i shared the one pair of parachute pants my mom agreed to buy, and we lip synced to madonna, michael jackson, and bruce springsteen. how we did all of these things without MTV but for the stolen glances at a neighbor's house, i do not know. the pop culture of the day managed to eek in through windowsills and into our realities even in our deprived state. thank god for you tube as we are currently playing catch up to all the videos we missed the first time around.
strawberry swing is one i am glad to have caught before i have to catch up on this decade's videos. it is both fanciful and sweet, smart and creative. it invokes the popularity of comic books and the recent trend of making movies from graphic novels. more than anything, however, it makes me think of my husband's story of his desire to be a superhero....so much so that his 7 year old boy self wore superman underoos beneath his clothing...just in case. it makes me smile to think of him as the superhero in striped socks and me as the princess trapped in the teacup. i'd like to think he would battle evil flying squirrels, hat wearing land fish, and toothy sea monsters to rescue me from a castle in the clouds. take a minute to let the video entrance you...



once i saw that video, i felt inspired to draw, which turned into a painting i did entitled things to come with lots of little boy toys and playful objects drawn into the background...thinking my own little guy may someday want to be the superhero his dad fancied himself. (don't tell him, but my husband really is a superhero of sorts to me!) my aunt actually owns this painting, and while i did not do it this week, i am still working on a series of similar but smaller pieces. this painting afforded me a little sigh of relief that i can still paint realistic objects when i want to!