I continue with my illustrations for Flash Fiction February 2020, twenty-nine days of flash fiction stories at Fictive Dream, an online fiction magazine featuring short stories.
For the event I created a small abstract painting for each selection – in fact, I did more than one painting per story. I am showing you all the images, day by day, throughout February. I’m also including a short write-up as to how I went about turning the authors’ words into pictorial representations.
I hope you’ll take a look at my art, then go to Fictive Dream, see which image editor Laura Black chose for the magazine, and read the story!
Thank you to Laura for her faith in my work and to the authors for such wonderful material to work with.
Today’s story is:
Longings by Eva Eliav. Read it here at Fictive Dream.
Here are the artworks on their own:
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- Image 55
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- Image 56
and here they are with the banner.
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- Image 55
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- Image 56
Comments:
This story concerns memories a woman has of her father and her growing-up years, reflecting on dreams that did not come true and on the life that did occur. The motif of “home” is the thread that ties this story together. Various homes are mentioned: large elaborate houses, a camper, a condo, and the father’s final home after death.
Image 55 – In this image I depicted the daughter’s childhood desired home: the family lives in a large elaborate home but she would prefer a trailer and camping out at night with a campfire. I included the outline of the large house but within it I set the camper with a fire, under the stars.
Image 56 – I focused on the homes as they bound the father and daughter together through life. The first panel depicts the elaborate home that the daughter despises and the father needs. In the next panel I set the camper as the daughter pictured it, cozy at night. I extended the camper into the third frame, symbolizing the actual home the father lived in for the later years of his life as well as being symbolic of his final “home”.
Read the story at Fictive Dream.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
I like the way you’ve used the theme of “home” and what that really signifies as a visual motif in both pieces. The first illustration appeals to me most because it connects to some of the more philosophical themes in the story: the “home” is placed in such a large context and that communicates something about the insignificance of the material possessions and that reminder that we don’t take those things with us when we die.
Thank you. I like how these turned out, too, with the needs of the story giving me some good directions to go. I think these pictures approach the idea from two sides, either the one where our material beings are presented against the large universe and are small, or as kind of an inventory of possessions and important, but only on such a small scale. To me it is interesting how the story made me think of both sides.