Dotty Christine
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Dotty Christine has stilts for legs and a tiny head. Her arms are soft, like tentacles. They curve around a chicken she cradles. Behind her, a cobbled path diverges, its two branches leading to two houses, and the ground rises steeply to a narrow ribbon of sky. Everything tilts a little precariously, but Dotty looks straight out at us. “It’s her declaration of independence,” says Mary Jones, who created both the painting–which she says is loosely autobiographical–and the limericklike rhyme mounted beneath it. “She will be whatever she is.”
“I’m looking for that place where words and drawing come together,” she says. “Kids develop a series of pictorial symbols, which is the same thing as writing. It’s conceptual. When they draw a scene with the sky up here, and the sun right here, and themselves smiling, with a dog and a tree, they’re saying, all is right with the world. And everything is in its place.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Charles Eshelman.
