In the first post, I briefly described my creative session with children Doroteja (8) and Domas (5). Later, I used the drawings by children, their stories and photographs to create 10 different ideas for a Neverland Portrait. Out of these ideas, the family chose their favourite – Doroteja and Angry Fish. The video below briefly shows the whole story of how this idea came about.
In this and future posts, I will talk about the further development of this idea and its various painterly versions.
I created 6 painting versions of this drawing. In this post you can see all the versions in one place and also read about how the family reacted to the presentation.
Fish theme in Doroteja's family
I want to clarify that during the first presentation of the 10 ideas in drawing, the parents had selected their 5 favourite ideas and then had difficulty in choosing just one for further development. I encouraged them not to bother about it and promised that I would make painting versions of all 5 ideas. This way, during the creative process, one piece would inspire another, all paintings would have various original connections, and it would make it easier to choose a favourite for the final painting.
However, when I started working on the first idea, I realized that developing just one idea into painting versions was very time-consuming and creatively demanding. Moreover, after this experience, it seemed to be even more useful to explore one idea in-depth than to superficially combine several ones.
When I told Doroteja’s family that I had only managed to develop painting versions of one idea – “Doroteja and Angry Fish” – the girl’s mom said that it was a lucky coincidence, as the theme of the fish was very close to their family. Their dad is a fisherman, their dad’s dad is a fisherman; both men and children fish. So “Doroteja and the Fish” is a particularly pertinent theme. (It’s amazing how life smiles at me like that.
This was the first painting I revealed to the family, and they reacted with exclamations of awe, surprise and admiration. It was clear to them that everything was underwater. The Mum said the colours were unexpected, childishly bold. The colour of the water is reminiscent of the Mediterranean, and for the children it was the colour of eyes. And when I told them that this idea was about a magic crystal ball, the Mum said “the more I’m looking at it, the more I like it”. The Dad added that the painting gives a fascinating impression.
The Mum found this painting also interesting. Dad found it lacking in content and had too much white left over. The Mum understood that it had to be this way because it was a watercolour effect. When I told them that I wanted to convey in an abstract manner the sky and Doroteja flying, it was only then that the whole family started to see the clouds and the colours of the sky. The little girl really liked the shades of the clouds.
For the family, the first impression was that the fish had a very expressive and human eye. They liked the emerald colour. Then the family started to argue: one person thought the background looked like a sea, another thought it looked like mountain glaciers, another – like the surface of a lake. The fish resembled a dolphin, but the Dad didn’t agree.
I said that I was very happy that everyone disagreed on what it was, because that was my aim – to convey a very ambiguous world in which the elements are mixed up. Then the children had even more associations to add: it’s earth-like, or as if flying in the trees on a very clear day; or maybe cosmos, and also reminiscent of waves, and the fish tail is very interesting. For the Mum, out of the three paintings already shown, this was her favourite.
For me, this painting is about correlations between fish, water and watercolour – an artistic technique of how paint reacts with water. But the family had many more fun associations about this painting.
The Dad immediately said that he liked this version better. It reminded him of the film Avatar – those magical trees with the branches that glow. Doroteja said that for her it was like flying through feathery clouds. For Mum, it was like seeing bacteria through a microscope. Then Doroteja pointed to a little dot and said that this one looked very much like a corona virus (that really made me laugh). The whole family kept adding different associations: earthworms; grass strands; fast-running mice, so fast that even the sparks go over; in the mysterious kingdom; huge rocks; eggs; a fish hatching out of an egg and rushing out of the nest; or hurrying through the leaves and flowers; or drinking nectar. Due to the subject of eggs, we moved on to the germination of life – sperm with two ovaries. Then it became problematic for parents to explain to their children what these “spermies” were.
Although I had no intention of triggering so many variations of associations at the time of making the painting, I found these playful speculations of parents and children not only amusing but also enriching in terms of insights into how many more potential stories could be developed with this type of markmaking.
This one was the family’s favourite in comparison to previous ones because it had the impression of completeness. Compared to watercolour paint, acrylic painting seems to take more time to create and therefore has more weight than others.
Although my intention was to depict a fish flying over a “naively” painted wavy sea, the family saw more associations in this painting. The blue looks both like the sea and like snowy mountains. The fish seems to be followed by a seashell, or perhaps it is a vortex that wants to draw the fish in, or perhaps the fish and the whole storm have come out of the vortex. from which the fish spills out. The Dad said that the seashell appears a bit out of place and at the same time overly eye-catching. The children disagreed – they liked it all very much because the fish can have legs like a human, which rush so fast that they splash into foams. The Mum also disagreed, saying that she thinks everything is very much in place and very well composed, but perhaps she would like to emphasise the shape of the whirlpool more in the shape of a seashell, and to make the fish look like it is coming out of its spiral.
I told the family that there was one more painting to see. And if they chose this painting as their favourite, we can then decide together how and what to change in this composition.
This painting also sparked long discussions in the family about what could be depicted here. I was surprised that at the very beginning Doroteja and her friend, who was also at the presentation, both saw that it was a fishbowl. (It turns out that Doroteja had recently received one of this type of aquariums but the fish had died.) And when Doroteja asked her mum “What’s in here?” pointing to the silhouette of a man, her mum replied that it was the girl herself looking and reflecting black on the glass, or it was her brother. The girl realised that it was the reflection in the window. Dad also noticed that there was an opening at the top of the painting, like an aquarium, but it was not clear to him why it was cut crookedly. Doroteja explained to her dad that there was a water wave and the opening was above it. So the family guessed my true intentions from the start.
Later on, the fantasies of what else it could be began. The Dad told me that it reminded him of science fiction films, where these sparkling and glittering elements are depicted as artificial intelligence or aliens. For example, at the end of the film Oblivion with Tom Cruise, a cube appeared glowing in a very similar way. In that case, the window with the silhouette of a human being could be aliens looking through the window of the universe.
The children thought that this place could be among the flowers, or in a crystal ball where the fish and Doroteja are being raised by someone. The children also thought that it could be a map showing forests and countries, or even the globe itself showing continents. Or it could be an aquarium set up outside in the autumn trees. The white rectangle shapes at the top left looked both like a light reflection and like a familiar path leading to the lake.
To the Mum, the painting looked like a water drop, and at other times it was reminiscent of a eye pupil.
Then the children thought that it was the pupil of a man looking at Doroteja with a fish, and that perhaps the man was fighting with the fish.
The Mum said at one point that she found the silhouette of the man creepy, as if it were a creepy male figure watching Doroteja, and would therefore ask for this detail to be removed if this was the chosen version. Others then started to speculate that it could be a watching alien. Or maybe it is a mirror in which Doroteja sees herself, only in another world. It could also be a path between two surreal worlds, or maybe the girl is travelling through time. Her mother shared that maybe it is Doroteja looking into a bubble of her memories during her old age. Doroteja herself further suggested that perhaps it is the referee watching from the booth and announcing the news, while the fish is taking part in the match. Then her mother began to doubt that it might even be a good idea to keep the silhouette of the man, because this picture, like a true work of art, evokes so many different thoughts in everyone.
I told the family that it was an idea I had discovered with the help of a friend – an aquarium that the parents watching over and taking care for their little girl like of a pet. The Mum liked the idea immediately, but Dad didn’t like it very much and preferred the idea of fantasy films. I told them that there were all sorts of variations for this painting: take out the window with the human figure or change it in some way; make the opening of the aquarium and the waterline clearer; or do not convey the illusion of an aquarium at all; maybe change the fish’s body to something more intangible like in the previous paintings and make it appear more dangerous, because the current one (my friend told me) looks like a toy.
So we decided that they would keep all the paintings for a while to think about it and decide.
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