Young Medusa

here's a piece that gestated over a period of a month but came together quickly. i was having drinks with friends when the name "young medusa"© popped into my head. i liked it but didn't have anything to write it down on. so i borrowed a pen and grabbed a packet of the coffee sweetner equal and scribbled the name on a side. that was over a month ago.

cut to this past week. i was preparing samples to send out and i wanted a new piece to enclose, which meant i had to work fast. that packet of equal had been sitting on my desk in all that time and i finally decided to address it. i had a vague, fuzzy notion of the face with the tendrils of snaking hair wriggling out and away from her head but what was her face going to look like. since i had dubbed her "young" as in youthful she shouldn't be the spiteful, gruesome gorgon we all remember her from that cheesy (but cool, fun) movie "clash of the titans". no this young lady would not be quite so despicable...yet.

no, she would still be a little wide-eyed, maybe not quite beaten down upon by life, just yet. and she would have freckles (cause i think they look cute). i gave her a pose that, to me, had a wistful, dreamy quality. (well, that's what i'm selling here :) and yes, that is her serpentine body undulating in and out of the frame.

i don't know her story quite yet, but she whispers bits of it in my ear in the dead of night. of course, i can't ask her in a face to face chat, only through a mirror, cause we all know what happens when you look a gorgon straight on...

you turn to stone.

Comments

[Rita]

This image is totally inspiring. You made her so hopeful, which is jarring and exciting to the imagination. Makes a person want to tell the story . . . (and think of Darth Vadar, haha).

I don't know what the story is, and my heart is breaking for her already!!

[Lee]

I love this image - how you have her looking down in a pool of some sort (I think) and that's how we're not really looking AT her but at her reflection - very clever! Also, love the expression on her face - I can totally see it as a picturebook - hey, look how Gregory McGuire re-imagined the Wicked Witch of the West for "Wicked" - you could do the same for the poor, misunderstood Gordon, Medusa!
What fun!
Lee

[Lee]

Gorgon. GorGon.
whoops.

Lee