From Four to Twelve

When I was four, I spent a golden afternoon at my little friend Betsy Haze's house. We listened to a little pink record player, and read along with a book that came with the record. The name of the story was "The Headless Horseman". While the story itself didn't unnerve me, the illustration on the cover did. In the foreground, poor Ichabod Crane, pushing his gangly self as hard as he could run to get away from the ebony nightmare behind him. But THAT isn't what frightened me. The foreshortening of the demon rider, his cloak unfurling out behind him, didn't make sense to my young mind. The ends of the cloak looked like sleeves, but there were no hands at the end of those sleeves. (In reality, the hands were behind the horse's neck on the reins, but I didn't understand that - artistic conventions are lost on four year olds.)

That night, I dreamed of the headless horseman's hands. And the night after. And the night after. In fact, almost every night, from age four to age twelve, I had that nightmare. Over the years, the hands took on different personalities; the three of us enacted different scenarios. When my father moved out, one of the hands disappeared from my dreams. It wasn't until I drew one of the first versions of this painting that the dreams stopped. Here is the more mature piece.

And that's why you'll see so many hands rampaging through my paintings.

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