The Gingerbread Man

Hello! The idea behind this one, I think was MUCH better than its execution... definitely on my list to redo. It is based on the fairytale the gingerbread man, if you don't know it in a nutshell a gingerbread cookie comes to life and runs away from many captors. Eventually he needs help crossing a river so a clever fox offers to help him, but eats him! (depending on the version I guess it is different, but in this painting the fox is ferrying him across, to eat him in the middle of the river!) I like the story, and it got me thinking... why would he come to life? The story was from  the 1700 ish WRITTEN, so orally it is much older... I wonder if it was originally thought he was enchanted by a witch and thats why he came to life... which is what made me want to paint this! A cute cookie is boring, so I made mine enchanted by evil witch magic. I looked up a gingerbread cookie recipe and made him of the ingredients you would literally use to make the cookie, but in there natural form because back then wheat wasn't ground into flour for you! So he is made of wheat, cinnamon bark, ginger roots (some of them have plants sprouting from them), anise, cloves, and nutmeg. WHO knew that nutmeg was an evil alien spice of doom!?!?!??!! I want you to go google it RIGHT NOW, and tell me that sucker looks like the alien substance from War of the Worlds! (with Tom Cruise). Geez. who knew?! That was especially helpful, I used the fruit and the seed part to be his evil little heart, and tried to make it look like the red light was his blood/ life force, and shown through in a few places, such as his eyes, mouth, and stomach area.

I wanted him to be evil and plantish... well he certainly is plantish but not evil enough for me, and he really blends a lot in with the fox. I was bummed. The fox is cute, but wasn't really the important part, so as I said evil gingerbread dryad-man is definitely on the re-do list. 

This also showed up in my solo show MYTHOLOGY, in the "real myths" room, I'm sure you can figure out why [it's a real story] but please check out my documentation of the show in my gallery!