Red Vision by Leonor Fini, 1984
Leonor Fini seems like she was a rather ferocious person. Even too individualistic for the Surrealists.
I thought of fire looking at this. Maybe a fire invading a house, which then reminded me of when I was little and I was very afraid of the house burning down and would go out and check in the middle of the night all the time.
When I was very small, a house did burn down in our neighborhood, and I heard it, and also the fire engine lights and embers and things made shadows on my bedroom walls, which I then made into swimming fish in my dreams, and sleepwalked down the hall, and my mom called me to come to her and I said “I can’t, there’s fish in the way.” Which is when my mom knew her kid was sleepwalking.
This child is confronting some kind of intrusion that does not follow the rules of gravity or being indoors or anything. She seems distressed to see it, as if it represents or is something upsetting to her. Anger? A memory?
The dark figure in the background seems bent over with regret. Is this the child at a later time? Is this image about a failed attempt at relationship within a family?
In What We Do In The Shadows (the TV series and movie), when the vampires get angry, they hiss and shoot up toward the ceiling. That’s what I think of here. Something incendiary, and upset.
The figure in the background might be another adult person who cannot seem to get things together. Maybe it’s a parents-child triad, though that seems kind of obvious and simplistic.
What does it bring to your mind?