Hansel, Gretel, and the Fragments of a Design Process

Grief House Revisited Part 4

Listen to the poem and the rest of the stack here:

Bread Crumbs
by Abigail Platter

We children
Play in the dark 
Packing stale hope
Dropping bits beneath our feet 

To wander and lose ourselves
Bows uncracked under sun blades
Unable to break the canopy
Mangled frescoes above our heads
A sinister sistine

Could it be as we eat the ginger house
Undappled
We eat his broken body
Or did we break it on the way?
Sweets constructed by hags 
Reciting incantations over Bethlehem 
Crumbs fall from our mouths 
Our chin and chests dusted 
With Sugar snowfall
Fresh Powder
Within reach of the witch clutches 
We are saved by the hope
We left behind
Too indulgent to give it thanks 
As the cinnamon burns
And the witch goes with it
The scent of a ruined patisery 
Lingers on our clothes 
And in our hair 
And through our stale beginning

Fragments, Watercolor on Paper, 2021

A good number of people have told me they feel scared when viewing this image. They find the seeming dismemberment in a dark woods a little off putting... I suppose it’s understandable.

It is, however, my most popular image and one that still gives me feelings of enchantment and longing.

I imagined her lost and enfolded into the landscape.

Of course, Full integration is impossible, as she is other than her environment, but she is enveloped. Entangled. Perhaps in pieces, but on the other hand, so completely entwined to where she is lost, that the picture remains intact. Whole.

The Design Process:

I designed it will type in mind, so the value balance was delicate.

Started out horizontal:

Too bright. Too Boring.

Too fragmented. Bring in some color and make the values closer.

Much better.