Lady In Burqa Eats Pizza

Wondermare Analysis

This vision is inspired by a particular strain of British “psychedelic” art originating as far back as the late plays of Shakespeare (perhaps most exactly in The Tempest) the mystical etchings of William Blake (considered mad by contemporaries for his diverse and symbolically rich corpus which embraced imagination) and running through 19^th Century on to the absurdist dreamscapes of Lewis Carroll, the elaborate fantasy worlds of J.R.R Tolkein (The Hobbit et al.) and T.H. White (The Once and Future King), the enduring classics of children’s literature of A. A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows), and J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan) before finally reaching its modern apex with the psychedelic scene of 60’s London most popularly enunciated by the Beatles with their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, their subsequent animated film Yellow Submarine and the characteristic set design found in Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner.  As opposed to the US version, in Britain during the late 1960’s, psychedelia was less associated with politics, rather it found its cultural impetus as an underground movement reacting against the prejudices and hypocrisies of the British class system. Arguably, the British approach to psychedelia was a more enlightened one, though we have a suspicion it may have been a reaction to grey weather and a celebration of short but glorious summers.  Visually associated with bright colors and elaborate yet harmonious arrangements governed by a disciplined whimsy, or a playful industry – this scene excites the imagination, pleases the eye, and aims to evoke the cheerful light of a simpler time, perhaps recalling a carefree childhood with the privilege and power of maturity.  Images of such happiness include luminescent flowers, colors of quaint lusciousness, and costumes of familiar roles (military and royal or common) worn in radical circumstances:  imagine atmospherics combining cotton candy parasols crossed with turquoise tandem bicycles, or zeppelin like awnings colored in the manner of hot air balloons.  Using the rainbow as our fundamental palette, other colorings include a girlish pink cut with elephant grey and the deep, shiny black associated with beetles, bowlers, and Bentleys, silverware of significant heft, and napkins of fine clothe. 

Rick Raguso