dready art ‘big lizard’ -20×12 – original on paper

when it comes time to drawing a dready, I’m looking for a story to tell, especially one with a little whimsy in it … this one told itself really …

it came, though, encapsulated with other memories …

the person who had commissioned the idea, as a gift for friends, had in the meantime died: I had known her well for many years and she’d asked me to do it and I had said i’d do it for love not money … after her death her family agreed that I could continue and we all worked together to an end.

but it wasn’t just her memory that came along on the journey – it is a story about Jamaicans, after all!

my mother is deathly ‘fraid of lizard and so many funny memories of the way that she used to dash and dance through doorways at Goshen worried about croaking lizard dropping on her head, peaking in first to make sure the beast wasn’t over the doorway

my sister same way …

One of my favourite ‘uncles’, with whom I spent a lot of time when we were all living in florida used to have a constant battle with lizard … here a grown, manly man, would tip toe ’round lizards in the back yard, by the pool, like they was dragons! one week there was a story in the Sun Sentinnel newspaper about a pet Kimodo having escaped in the Hollywood area, and immediately I had this image, in my head, of uncle c, with a tin of baygon bug spray, confronting this big lizard in the yard, ‘fraid for his life …

i’ve seen people who face down gun man bullets and don’t panic, go all shivery over croaking lizard …

me, I don’t like snake