"Untitled" by Sandesh Nicol

Image posted with permission by the artist whose website can be viewed here and works for sale can be purchased here.

Two androgynous figures embody two faces of winter under the cool and still branches of trees. 

One blond and composed, a gentle finger offered as perch for falling snowflakes. In solid, lanky blue, he casts a solid shadow on the bumpy mounds of snow-covered ground, a slight cock of his head, a serene smile on his face. 

The second, white-robed and exuberant, arms flung up in greeting of the rising sun. Slanted, grey marks stripe her entire body, almost as if in an attempt to scribble her out of existence. Like a translucent specter, she employs dramatic gesture to boost up the horizon, lined with blackened trees. In one graceful sweep she summons the very sun up from behind the earth.  

"You Talk Too Much, You Think Too Much, You Don't Do Enough" by Sandesh Nicol

Image posted with permission by the artist whose website can be viewed here and works for sale can be purchased here.

A solitary cat sits, seemingly calm, but marks jut up from behind him like porcupine quills. Is he the one delivering the criticism that screams from the top banner in thick, black, all-caps? Or maybe "you" refers to the cat? Or perhaps it is neither, and the cats are just another part of the mysterious scenery.

A trail leads from the solitary cat to hut-like structures. I wonder about their scale: are they large enough for human beings, or are these more like cat houses? I cannot imagine what sort of hut for people would occupy the same environment as evergreen trees.

There is an innocence about this image. The three cats at the bottom resemble children's sketches. The trees are simplified as upright poles with balanced rows of needly branches, and as such they more resemble artificial miniatures than real evergreens. But this indication of child-like innocence is only one element.

There is also something wild at play. Fields of cool green and blue glow behind jagged black marks, the sense of their light emphasized by white lines radiating over the still blue. Is the blue water? Is the green the continuation of the trees? Whatever they represent, they feel as if they go back quite far, and I feel as if I could jump into the lake and swim away, and what is in black to the left of the color is very close, dark, small, and perhaps secret.

The more I look at this image, the more I want to lock myself into a room by myself, blast music to dance freely to, or pull out paints and paper and just go crazy. Tap into that inner child, that wild, intuitive part of the brain and take action.