Gun-Powder Eyes

I couldn't do it...it was all finished and I went in and added antlers.

Deer Hart (Dear Heart)-Pains










"I love your long shadows and your gun-powder eyes."


I fell in love with these lyrics, from the new Neko Case song Prison Girls and it went from there. That, coupled with the birds I had been think about recently helped to shape this piece. And I have been thinking about that common phrase,"a little birdie told me...". Those birds are always whispering secrets in someone's ear.

So this is how I came up with the tie between me (the little gray bird, holding the smaller bird) and the 'gun-powder eyes'. I chose the shot because I look a bit sad and very much submersed in my own little world, as compared to the other two girls in the photo. In fact, the vast majority of my childhood photos look like this. They always feature me as a fairly expressionless little bird...

I also painted myself gray because technically, I think I have gray eyes. They always seem to photograph as black, rather than blue. It takes my unnaturally red hair for them to look even slightly blue. Someone recently asked me their color, and I told them I had finally determined that they were the color, Payne's Gray. They retorted that it was "very appropriate", speaking to the verbal pun. (Payne's Gray, pronounced like 'pains', is one of a variety of colors of paint found in tubes. Artists will be more familiar with the term and color.)

The idea of shadows has been on my mind since I made the post on loss shadows. (Empty, Rather Than Full, I & II) But the idea of LONG shadows, that was a new one for me to think about. Long shadows seem extra sad and morose, don't you think? Like they have been that way forever, stretched and gloomy and looming. I think that long shadows would probably be the color of pain(s)....Payne's Gray....which also happens to be the color of gun-powder.

There ya go.