I'm Not Sydney!
Looking out the window
The window of my studio looks over a tree-lined alleyway and a patchwork of small urban gardens. In the summer this alleyway and the gardens are filled with joyful, chaotic gangs of small children running back and forth, hiding, playing ball or hopscotch but especially playing very involved and complicated games based on long rambling stories with a lot of role-playing.
Sketch followed by final illustration
What is striking is the intensity with which these children play. They immerse themselves so much in a story that reality disappears and a new country or landscape emerges which is only visible to them.
They become animals, kings, witches, warriors, ghosts and monsters. They don't need costumes or accessories: a stick becomes a sword, stones change into gold nuggets, leaves serve as camouflage, puddles are stormy seas, a tree becomes a fort and a long sturdy branch of the same tree becomes a perfect hanging perch for an upside down sloth.
And this is where Sidney became a sloth,
hanging upside down from a branch, his fur glistening in the sun as:
"... leaves and flowers unfurled and birds of every colour flew through the tropical forest..."
When his friend Sami comes looking for him he says in a soft slow voice:
"...I'm not Sydney , I am a sloth!"
Sami, who thinks sloths are too slow scampers up the tree and leaps into the tropical forest as a spider monkey, her long tale curling and uncurling behind her.
One by one Sydney's friends, or rather, the sloth's friends transform themselves into animals as the landscape changes from tropical jungle to savanna to scrubby bushland.
As they climb, crawl, lumber, leap and soar in or around the tree, as they play out their extraordinary animal characters, laughing, chatting, trumpeting , eating ants and leaves, the reader inhabits their imaginary world until the elephant brings them back to reality...
But the last pages tell us that their wonderful adventure lingers on through the night because when you change the ordinary into the extraordinary even for minute, an hour or a day, bits and pieces of the extraordinary stay with you and transform you.
I started writing and sketching this book at the beginning of the year 2020 when the world was first confined because of the pandemic. It was my way of escaping reality and of immersing myself in a childhood game of powerful imagination.
The illustrations were done in sunny watercolours and in quick pencil strokes while looking out the window of my studio at an almost deserted alleyway.
Although...I still could see and hear a few "animals" scampering about.
