Not My Stories
A creepily over-described fairy tale from Hams Christian Anderson.
A nasty, conceited child was going to visit her mother and was given a beautiful loaf to take as a gift. The path became boggy so she put the loaf into the muck and stepped on it so her pretty shoes would not be fouled. The ground sank away and she fell into the disgusting underground domain of the Marsh Woman who gave her to the devil. After decades, the sympathetic tears of a good child allowed her release and she flew into the sun.
I had every intention of leaving all detail behind and painting this as a semi-abstraction. A long panel would allow me to paint the story as an emotional map, I decided, but as the painting progressed, it slowly approximated every detailed from my memory.