The writing (well, drawing, really) on the wall

A scene from the hallway up our stairs.

Don't tell my mom, but I've always been a girl who liked to draw on walls. (Actually, you can tell her. I think she knows.)

When I was little, I had giant decals on my bedroom walls of Disney characters. I thought they were the absolute coolest. They were like big murals on my walls, and since then, and maybe because of this, I've remained attracted to murals and to really big paintings.

It's one of the first things that attracted me to Kelli Bickman's art work. She paints big. (She paints small, too, sometimes.) Something about that kind of bigness speaks to me. I love to feel surrounded by art, like I'm a part of the scene. (To read Blisschick's awesome interview with Kelli Bickman, click here.)

So, it stands to reason that I would find it impossible to not draw on the walls of our own house.

I started here, above this particular doorway, with this small painting of Ernie, our orange tabby cat. After he left his fur suit in April of 2007, I felt as though he needed to be memorialized somehow, somewhere. One day, I got out the ladder and some paint, and before Zoe could say, "Why are you painting a cat instead of a rabbit?" it was already done (sorry, Zoe).

I painted Ernie amongst some stars and birds. There wasn't much Ernie liked more than watching his birds, and that was what I wanted to be reminded of each and every day.

Over the next few days, these birds started to fly not only around the rest of the room (as you can see below), but they also began to fly up and down the hallways and down the stairs (hence the picture at the very tippy top of this post). Those birds were out of control. But, in a rather nice way. Not in an Alfred Hitchcock way.


Since then, Zoe has gotten her wish. I've painted a familiar looking, and very pretty little rabbit in her room. I also added our Jobie to the wall opposite Ernie after he, too, left his fur suit. (We call these their "ancestor tablets"). I'll post about these sometime in the near future.

For now, I need to head downstairs to punch down my rising bread dough. I wonder if any pink birds will follow me all the way to the kitchen?