What Hansel and Gretel Tell Us

I love stories. I’ve helped tell stories all my life through theatre. But now I’m sharing stories in a different and more personal way.

My art heroes tell stories, too. Each of them use their skills to select subject matter and compositions that communicate ideas, feelings, or moments of a narrative.

I’ve used fairytales and folk tales and fables, myself. But I’m in good company, as most of the artists whom I admire also used commonly known tales for the topics of their paintings. My current favorite art hero, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, based a lot of her work on stories or symbolism, using them to imply a larger message and communicate a bigger idea.

I had Hansel and Gretel on my list for a long while. It was one of those stories that’s rather complicated and feared it would take a lot of different elements to communicate what the image was actually about. I felt like I couldn’t just do a portrait of two siblings. That wouldn’t work for me. So it took me some time to get the courage up to just dive in and do it.

But it fell into place. 

And it wasn’t until after I was done that I realized why I was attracted to the story so much. It actually teaches us several things that are incredibly relevant to today’s world in the US.

1) We see how we are more resilient than we think we are. Hansel and Gretel were literally tossed out of their home and abandoned, having to rely upon each other to survive. And they did it. Starvation, disorientation, cannibalism… They got through it.

2) The siblings escaped by working together. They were smart, clever, patient, trusted each other, and quietly put in the time to set things up to thwart their capture by the nearly blind witch who lured them in with candy.

3) Lastly, it teaches us that even children can rise up and overthrow predator tyrants. We may succumb to temptation, but in the end we can redeem ourselves and destroy evil. Terrible people may succeed in the short term, but a well-placed push can burn a bitch pretty good. Even then, kids were doing it. Why can’t we?

I was startled to realize these contextual relevancies. It made me feel like perhaps I was supposed to do this image. And now I feel proudly subversive in some ways. It’s fun to make statements to those who can distill them without needing to have them completely spelled out. I think perhaps that might be a key to symbolism in some ways—hidden meanings under the apparent visual packaging and composition.

I’m going to explore more of this.

Regardless, I’m happy to share what I made, and to let you know that it’s available as a new 11x17” limited edition, signed and numbered print. 

https://coreyartusimagery.com/products/hansel-and-gretel-11x17-limited-edition-print