Artsy Fartsy Friday #3

Hi everybody! This is Kaos's Mom today. She wanted me to post today because of the specialness of today's artwork. First let me tell you the Ft. Carson fire was "mopped up" yesterday. Whenever they say they're "mopping up" a fire, I can't help but laugh. I know it means they're putting out hotspots and finalizing some other stuff, but I always picture a bunch of firemen in the forest or a field with mops. Anyway, it sounds like all 3 fires in Colorado are pretty much done and they're in clean up mode now. Fire season always makes me nervous and this year's starting so early REALLY makes me nervous.

Okay, now for the Artsy stuff.

This is my White Lion. Sorry for all the weird angels on these photos. We hung them at normal eye level which of course isn't my eye level. It's tough being short. My White Lion doesn't have a name we just call him White Lion. He is done with oil pastels which I love to work with, but don't very often because they make a huge mess
I started him right after my husband and I moved in together and finished him right after we got married. My mother-in-law had some frames at her house that she wasn't using and said I could have them so I chose the biggest frame and 2 different colors of mattboard and made a fancy matt for him and hung him up. For as long as I could remember I've wanted a large picture or painting of a white tiger. I never knew why, it was just a really really strong feeling I had. When I was really young, I loved tigers and couldn't wait to go to the zoo to see one. My parents took me to the zoo and as soon as we got to the feline house I went running down the ramp. My Dad was supposed to have ahold of my hand because I was only about 4 years old. Well, I went running down the ramp, turned the corner and there was an extremly large tiger looking at me and snarling. He was behind glass, but a 4 year old doesn't know that! I screamed and was then afraid of tigers for a few years. I started to think they were cool again, but not as cool as I thought they were before one tried to eat me. Then I saw pictures of white tigers. I was infatuated with white tigers. If we were at a zoo or a fair with a white tiger, I usually ended up being left at the tiger area and then had to run to catch up with my group.
Around the time I finished my pastel drawing is when my mom and I's relationship crumbled. All of a sudden one day I decided to start sticking up for myself and stop worrying about what Mom thought. When my husband and I got engaged, I picked out the ring and the cost was hardly anything. I don't think we paid $100 for it. My mom flipped out and gave me this huge long lecture on how that wasn't enough and it didn't look like an engagement ring. That's when I strarted to realize I had been letting my mom bully me into things my entire life. That was also the first time I stood up to my mom. I told her I chose it and I didn't like "normal" engagement rings. I wanted something small, I wanted something that had more design in the band and I wanted something that while we're out camping and rock crawling and fishing and whatever else we're doing, I'm not going to worry about it getting snagged on something or loosing it. Plus, I have short stubby fingers and a big ring looks weird on my finger. My ring is perfect. Through the entire wedding process my mom would get mad at me for not following her orders. She walked out of the decorating after she argued with me about table clothes and she also walked out of the rehearsal dinner and threatened not to show up for the wedding because she was being ignored. It was pouring rain and I was trying to figure out where to put 30 people in my mother-in-law's house!! I had no idea she even left until someone asked me where my mom was. We adopted Kaos a few weeks later and my mom hated her (Kaos didn't really like my mom either). My mom was always saying labs are the dumbest dogs and anybody that owned a lab was stupid. Kaos does make me feel stupid sometimes but that's because she's so fricken smart. That Novemeber, when my husband went hunting, I wrote a letter to my mother and told her I was done worrying about what she thought of me all the time and worrying about upsetting her. I told her it was time to start thinking about me and my husband and doing things for me and my husband. I told her I was tired of never doing anything right and always worrying about how to please her. I told her I was tired of her controling me. I probably should have waited for my husband to get home before I gave her the letter because he hurt his knee hunting and my mom shut my cellphone off (and then a year later expected me to give it to my stepdad-that didn't happen) and so he freaked out when he couldn't get ahold of me (he was more worried about me than he was his knee). A few months after that happened, I had a dream about the white tiger. I was in a corral area surrounded by fences with a white tiger guarding the outside of the fence. The boards on the fence were all broken and falling apart. I stood there looking at the fence and the tiger for awhile and then all of a sudden I realized the tiger wasn't so mean and the fences were very weak so I stepped over the fence and the tiger came over and stood beside me. In my dream, my husband was standing behind me, the tiger was beside me and I started yelling at my mom. Her husband was there, too but he was kind of wandering off looking at the fence trying to figure out how to fix it. In my dream, I told my mom she couldn't control me any more and I wasn't afraid of her anymore. I told her the fences were gone and the tiger was my friend now instead of my guard. I walked off with my tiger friend and my husband and my Mom and stepdad kept trying to hang the boards up on the posts again, but the nails wouldn't hold them. After that dream is when I decided to do the special frame and matting on my drawing. He now has to hang in a room where I will see him and admire him every day. He's a reminder of how strong I am and that nobody can try controling me ever again.
So that's my White Tiger. I hope you like him.
Have a great weekend!!!
Hilary