12 Fish a Playin’
#308/365 Paintings
Instead of 12 days of Christmas, it’s 12 strains of fishes.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. This is my lump of fish color at the end of a 10 hour day. My favorite is the flying puffy above the 12. He’s like the little puffy that could. Lots to prove and do. Probably super young, like 40. Anyway, they all do look kind of purposeful in the chaos, don’t they?
The deep blues, the Thursday deep blues. Those dark blue shapes drew my eye today. They remind me of the dark blue brickel bush in the Dr. Seuss story “What Was I Afraid Of?” — otherwise known around here as “The Pants With Nobody Inside Them.” The fish swim brightly like the hero of that story shines while he picks a peck of snide, in a dark and gloomy snide field that was almost nine miles wide. Not looking afraid at all. Playing above the murky gloom, because it’s almost Friday, that’s why.
The Thursday blues is right. You are a blue person. You’ve commented on the quality of blue in many of my paintings. Love it.
“The Pants with Nobody Inside Them” OMG!!! Laughing hard. That’s a great title should you pursue it. Now I have to read that Dr. Seuss book. ; )
It’s the last story in The Sneetches, Dr. Seuss’ book about bigotry and closed minds and fear. You should read it. I have favorite memories of my aunt reading it to us in a sunny room in old SoCal. And many great memories of reading it to my own children.
“I was walking in the night
And I saw nothing scary.
For I have never been afraid
Of anything. Not very.
“Then I was deep within the woods
When, suddenly, I spied them.
I saw a pair of pale green pants
With nobody inside them!”
… leading up to one of my favorite lines in all of Dr. Seuss (“And there I was! Caught in the Snide!”)
I love your greens, too.
“The Sneetches and Other Stories” also has “Too Many Daves,” which I used to be able to recite, and many times did so in the car, sometimes to my kids’ annoyance.
“Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave
Had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?
Well, she did. And that wasn’t a smart thing to do.
You see, when she wants one and calls out, “Yoo-Hoo!
Come into the house, Dave!” she doesn’t get one.
All twenty-three Daves of hers come on the run!
This makes things quite difficult at the McCaves’
As you can imagine, with so many Daves.
And often she wishes that, when they were born,
She had named one of them Bodkin Van Horn
And one of them Hoos-Foos. And one of them Snimm.
And one of them Hot-Shot. And one Sunny Jim.
And one of them Shadrack. And one of them Blinkey.
And one of them Stuffy. And one of them Stinkey.
Another one Putt-Putt. Another one Moon Face.
Another one Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face.
And one of them Ziggy. And one Soggy Muff.
One Buffalo Bill. And one Biffalo Buff.
And one of them Sneepy. And one Weepy Weed.
And one Paris Garters. And one Harris Tweed.
And one of them Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt
And one of them Oliver Boliver Butt
And one of them Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate …
But she didn’t do it. And now it’s too late.”
When Grace was three or four she would say, “I want to be Marvin O’Gravel Balloon Face!”
You never realize the life your art has in the happy homes where it goes.
Ha ha.. this is wonderful. I’ve copied it and printed it. Thank you for taking the time. Dr. Seuss’s imagination has an additional brain.