…is the name of today’s story at Fictive Dream.
Throughout the month of February 2022 I will be showing you illustrations I did for Flash Fiction February 2022 at Fictive Dream, an online magazine devoted to the short story.
Here’s the image editor Laura Black chose for this story, Shapeshifting, by Fiona J. Mackintosh.
And here is the artwork with the banner. Take a look at this image. And then…
Read the story at Fictive Dream.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
The dark slash in the impressionistic geometry is just right. How fleeting it all is. (K)
Yes, that is the right word exactly. Fleeting. And then that time of reflection and regret. You hope that you can emerge into a new phase (not the one in the story, though).
Sadly not.
I enjoyed the story a lot. It had some personal resonance for me not in terms of identifying with the narrator but in terms of the way I used to imagine the narratives of the people around me when I was commuting in that same region of the world. I am reading your illustration as a map of London, the lilac blue representing the Thames and the ice blue blocks being the streets and the colourful slashes being the bridges. And I think a map is appropriate since the story depicted someone navigating the city while also reflecting on her own life and choices, which is also metaphorically a study of a map.
I like this story a lot too, from the perspective of being a person with more years lived than more to come, and aware of it. Enough time has passed for me and contemporaries that it’s possible to think of how things were when we were young and what was going to happen? And now we know. I love this illustration for the colors and the connotation of moving water which I think fits the story.
At last Flash Fiction February has begun and I couldn’t think of a better way to start than with Shapeshifting. In terms of the illustration this one stood out for me with the white background representing the starchy white restaurant but also the white van. And that flash of blue is brilliant. It can represent our fleeting lives, the glorious Thames and also the van racing towards the narrator. A fantastic start, Claudia, you couldn’t have got it more right with this image. A big thank you.
Thank you. I love this image for the colors and the wateriness and lack of definition in the image. Things shift around. As in the story. I personally liked this story a lot, it had a lot of meaning for me as I am in the stage of life, as is the narrator, where the answers to many questions are known, it’s disconcerting. And then that finality, that sudden ending, suddenly rushing up on the narrator, well, that was wrenching.
Such vivid writing with rich descriptions. The “tinsel glitter in her eye,” says so much. The “fingering grains of sugar on the table” really draw the reader in. I like the flat narrative, like a reporter laying out the facts, including the disrupting end. I see your artwork with the flat line as representing her life…
I like that idea of the flat line. A horizontal kind of life, no highs or lows? A kind of landscape. I also liked the tinsel image – you know exactly what that looks like. I really liked this story and I think it was a great choice to lead off the event.