Gossipy Creatures (SOLD)

This piece has been sitting on my desktop for quite awhile.  I coated some cardboard with some modelling paste still on my fingers from another painting I had done and didn't want to scrape it back into the jar.  I worked on it, set it aside, picked it up again when I wanted to paint, but didn't want to launch into anything major.  I've worked and worked on this little piece.

I wasn't sure how it was going to shape up or what it was, but it started to emerge from the background of paint smears I had put on it.

I call it "Gossipy Creatures."  I wanted to make the figure on the left not look so intent, I considered making that mouth upturn a bit, but I liked the worried/distant look in it's eyes, so I left it alone.  Maybe I was influenced by my co-worker, Crystal's, recent reading of Othello for her reading class.  That bird has a little glint of Iago, me thinks...or not. ha!

Just got back from walking the dog before I head off to work.  I was thinking about Othello while I wandered. I remember my high school English teacher, Miss Driscoll, having us read that play and requiring us to memorize long passages of Shakespearean verse, soliloquies filled with elaborate language beyond our capacities, but then upon comprehension, within our means.  God bless those teachers who filled us with terror and demand, who pushed ourselves and our brains.  We are always capable of so much more than we think or are required to do.