Little Christine, 16″ x 20″ oil on linen canvas board, framed by the artist.

Little Christine was an idea that came up as my daughter became a rabid fan of Phantom of the Opera. I wondered how Christine started out, before she was swept into the spell of the Phantom. She represents the pure joy of creating, the purity of singing, for the shear sake of doing it. Not performing or trying to sing higher or louder or with more passion. Just to sing. We all have been told at some point, something to the effect, “if you want to do this seriously you’ll have to turn yourself inside out to succeed.”  We are asked to give up the thing that made us love the thing, in order to do it on a “professional level.” The painting makes me wistful for a time when the joy of doing was all there was. The Hummingbirds fly because the must, out of a pure desire. They are a metaphor for the sounds little Christine is making, the sound we all make before someone got inside us and told us it wasn’t good enough. They exist, some in real and some in an imaginary plane.