Sunday, February 22, 2009

A Bird on a Wire

I was mussing about paradoxes yesterday in my journal. The issue last night was : Is desert island really "desert" (i.e. a place devoid of life ) if we always depict it with a palm tree on it? A tree, always a symbol of life, and a desert all in one idiom. It bugged me for a while how did we came up with that idea in, what seems to be , our global culture ? So to my surprise, today, I myself came up with another paradoxical combination. Here is an image of a bird ( a symbol of freedom ) brought into a context with a barbed wire (a symbol of restriction or imprisonment). I'm not sure what is this little soul trying to do : to fly in or to fly out? It sure is a sad world were there is a barbed wire to restrict anything. But it should be an inspiration to us that the lighthearted ones can overcome it just like birds. Tell me what do you see in this image ? Help me understand where is this bird coming from ? Where does it go?

5 comments:

Gifts of Creation said...

Hi...This presents a stark contrast and it's beautiful...to me, the crimson bird represents that sometimes freedom can be painful and cause blood to flow, however, the wings of freedom eventually triumph and overcome the chains that keep us bound...

RubyMay said...

nice work...!
Maybe a desert island would be better understood if it was thought of as a desert(ed) island...as in "no one around" !
and I find it interesting that your bird has used a symbol of restriction as a place to rest and think x
Great blog !
xxx

indybev said...

I'm just catching up with this late post. It's lovely.... and "thoughty" on your part. I grew up on a farm, where barbed wire was a fact of life, otherwise everybody's cows would've gotten all mixed up!!!! The cows often found it to be a good back-scratcher, so it's not surprising the birds found a good use for it as well.

Gifts of Creation said...

Hi...boy I was thinking pretty deeply for such a late hour!!
I was just going to answer your decoupage question..like I said I watched some tutorials on this and they were all a little different but what I gathered is that for regular paper(not napkins or tissue) you can use an even layer of elmers to initially glue the paper to the surface..I did this for the wooden box and for the journal. Then you can go back and cover it with modpodge, especially if you have overlapping edges.For tissue and napkin, you just modpodge ontop of it. I covered all of mine, after the glue and modpodge dried, with a layer of acrylic gloss medium..it was nice and thick with a little shine. They all dried clear.
I hope that helps.

Julie Allain said...

WOW Another wonderful creation I love your work

Thanks for joining in with Arty Girlz once again

Julie xx