Babble!

I will get around to something more cheerful soon, but this is what emerged from my last session of drawing. I had the title as soon as I started the scribbles. The boy is like younger boys that were in illustrated books by Garth Williams I had as a boy, or I should say we had, my sisters and I. There was the boy who caught the leprechaun and there was the story book about Crispin’s Crispian, the Dog Who Belonged to Himself. I experienced an odd occurrence I associate with an illustration in his book Elves and Fairies when I was between 9 and 11 or there about. I was up in the playroom in the Gaskin Street house and opened the book to a picture of one of his leprechauns. It came alive and it terrified me. I shut the book quickly and left the room. When I was older I looked at the book again and tried to see what I saw then but couldn’t. My rational mind had blocked the intuitive child. I try not to block that intuitive child any longer. Both are needed to get at the truth. Thus the title for this drawing on the last day of 2020: Babble.

By the way, I always thought that Mr. Dog, the title of the book mentioned, was a mild form of propaganda. It clearly states that Crispin’s Crispian was a conservative.

Stephen Hawks