Description
Size: 30,3 x 22,6 cm
Materials: Watercolour and coloured pencil on watercolour paper
If you ask me why I painted this mouse, I can only say because I felt like it. I had come across one of my earlier ones and I wanted to do a new one. The previous one was a pencil drawing of a mouse climbing a straw, and I didn’t want this one to do the same, but I wanted it to be doing something. If you ask me why the mouse is coming out of a hole in a log, that’s something my intuition would have to answer. Logic had nothing to do with that decision.
It was created during the dark days of winter, in January, and he’s coming out of a dark hole into this bright green world. So it could be seen as a metaphor for the sun coming out of the dark, or the people up here in Norway coming out into the sunlight again.
The mouse is coming out of his nest inside the log, looking wide-eyed and a bit scared, but he’s not hesitating. He’s got his paw well outside the nest, not letting his fear stop him. He’s ready to come out into the world. So it could also be a metaphor for coming out of your shell or going outside your comfort zone. To dare to take that step. Mice risk their lives when they step outside, but they do it anyway.
Another way to look at it is that if you’re working from home, it’s easy to get stuck indoors, to not get out of the house much, except for running errands. So this painting can remind you to take that first step outside your nest, whether that nest is your comfort zone or your actual nest, as in your home.
It ended up as a painting because of a happy accident. I was going to draw it, it was meant to be a coloured pencil drawing, but because I was painting my symbols next to it, it got some paint on it, so I turned it into a painting by adding watercolour to it.
