…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, Dark Sky Park, by Michael Cocchiarale.
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 
This is such a beautiful illustration for Dark Sky Park by by Michael Cocchiarale. The story unfolds during the night when the sky is full of stars and this is so vividly expressed in the artwork. I love the deep blue sky and the bright colours beneath it – colours that could suggest the lives being lived. The narrator’s life may not be quite as she would like and I see she and her partner in the red circles. Just lovely, Claudia, thank you.
Thank you. I love making a grid pattern in my art and making each section different but unified. That is important to me in composing such a work. And, I LOVE making a sky-like section and even more spattering it with paint of which the tiny drops can suggest so many things depending on the rest of the picture.
The illustration of the nighttime landscape and especially the way you’ve rendered the starry sky is beautiful. The two red dots make me think of the narrator and their partner and the way they are orbiting each other without being connected or having any overlap.
Thank you. I like the color scheme of this piece a lot, it seems peaceful to me somehow; and I do love creating a sky with paint and spatters.
Oh this is heartbreaking.
Interesting, I didn’t see the man as her partner at all–a brother? A father? Love and obligation all mixed up anyway. (K)
Yes, I thought the relationship was unclear too, but I envisioned it being her father. It’s interesting to read it considering it through different relationships, the ambiguity made me think. But you are right, this story is heartbreaking.
Before I read the story, I saw the green swath as a snake crawling through a city. After reading the story, I see it as the park. Those red dots feel like warm spaces of the people she observes engaged in loving togetherness. I can definitely relate to the main character’s resignation and perhaps resentment towards her elderly parent, especially one who has such empty space (and not in a good way) between their ears. I also like the way the main character sees the richness of space (in a good way) Lovely prose here:
“Sometimes, plagued by insomnia, she’d play them on her phone at three a.m. in a last-ditch effort to lull herself back to sleep. Eerie, undulating sounds they were. Ghost birds calling. She imagined two together, fat and sweet along a constellation’s twinkling bough.”
Yes. When I read this, I wondered what I would see, hearing the same sounds.