Seems that the dove is not the only muse that died on me …and prematurely for that matter.
I was pondering on killing the snail back in 2013 just that it was so much harder to kill…
Not that the dove is fully dead either…
Getting back to the snail, the comics were done before starting the search for The Perfect Home. So the snail muse lasted for another six years after I toyed with killing it.
However, I was ready to let it go after three years, but didn’t have a suitable muse to replace it with.
Snail was my nickname during a relationship with a person that marked who I am quite a lot and changed my course considerably as opposed to if I wouldn’t have met him.
Three years after the comic above, I wanted to do a project inspired by …well, birds. More precisely, bird nests.
Going from a work inspired by the nests of spiders, to a creature that has its nest with it, to nests of birds. It made some sense.
The project was supposed to be called Please don’t eat the snails…
Because birds eat snails…
And the snail will always be part of me and I do not want to kill it. I like what it turned me into and I want to keep it with me. 💕
This project didn’t come to happen due to a bad choice I made in 2017. I do not regret the choices I’ve made, but I must acknowledge when one is bad. I have this issue with letting go half way through something, especially when there are other people involved. Like if I invested in something, even if I clearly see it is not the best option for me I will go through with it or I will sacrifice quite a lot before finally letting go.
In 2013, I had to be pushed to get out of that relationship which turns out was not even close to what I would need and left me thinking I’d rather be alone for a long time after and even avoid falling in love. I always through I would rather be alone, but before I wasn’t running from love, I just wasn’t guiding my life around that. Still don’t.
In 2017, going the wrong way ended up with me in the hospital, which is wired to say …again, it was a good thing. The alternative could have been much worst. Could have been better too, but as far as unforseen events come this one made things easier for me… Not all, biking was hard and we were on a bike trip 😅.
After that I started playing with Arduino to create interactive art. I still keept the bird nest idea for a while, but I had to let it go as it wasn’t strong enough to replace the snail.
You would think it’s karma that a bird finally replaced the snail, but the dove is not the muse of the new project, this song is:
…and the heart, essentially.
The song is much older than this idea and the inspiration is essentially coming from the same source as the snail.
I got this idea at the end of 2018, but I had to finish Community lights, so I only started working on it at the end of 2019.
The dove as muse for me is something even older than the snail anyway, but last year it got stuck on a real person. Another person that had a big and really unexpected impact on me although the interaction was short, but it was intense.
Now, it is only fair to let the dove go. This project should have had two stages: lamps and objects that depict stories that other people hold in their hearts.
Because of the dove, now it has three: lamps, dove and stories that other people have in their hearts. Just that to get to the third step, I need to let go a little bit of what is in my heart because it consumes my mind just a wee (love this NZ expression ♥️) bit too much.
However, this second step was more than welcome as an evolution. It feels like something would have been missing in the project without it.
Also, the dove might get her own comic strip. It happened backwards this time. The snail started with the comics, the dove finishes with it and it might not even be clear that the comic will be about a dove. 😆 Lucky her! 😂
Really happy to have a drawing project especially since I decided to fill the summer with something different. ☀️
The joy of creating 