Jason Anderson

British artist Jason Anderson creates colorful abstract paintings composed of pixelated swatches of pastel-toned oil paint. Up-close, the artist’s paintings look like blocky layers of shapes and color; but, from afar, his scenes—featuring cityscapes, roads, trains, and marinas—are revealed.

Anderson began his career as a stained glass apprentice, where he worked on restoring the windows of cathedrals. He soon progressed onto designing the glass murals himself, where he learned how to break down subject matter into “jigsaws” of colored sections. This approach still shines through in his paintings today—complex scenes are brought to life with simple shapes and careful consideration to hue and tone.

No take only throw

Little girl teaching her cats how to draw a flower 

*baby voice* “… and if you have any questions, just ask me! And now… yeah. And now you draw the roots. You draw them all twisted up! Got it? A flower? Now draw it. Did you get it, Luis Roberto? Did you get it, Jurandir? Look. Did you get it? That’s how you draw a flower.”

One of my best friends had one of the exchange students as her roommate; she was about four foot eleven and maybe ninety pounds, and she had a passion for huge platform boots and shirts with English slogans on them. She explained exactly that – it was cool to wear shirts with English lettering on them, even if you didn’t exactly know what it meant (this was in the late 90s/early 00s).

Her absolute favorite shirt was black with BITCH picked out in enormous rhinestones. She’d worn it three times before I asked her if she knew what it meant, and she said she’d been told it meant “Like a baby dog, the cutest dog? A really cute girl puppy.” 

So I explained to her that it wasn’t quite an accurate translation, and as I elaborated on what it meant, from “female dog” on up to “a name you call a woman you don’t like” and all the reasons you might call someone that, her eyes got wider and wider until finally she yelled “THAT’S BETTER, THAT’S THE BEST! BITCH IS EVEN BETTER THAN CUTE!”

I present to you a different idea.

There’s several themes behind Spirited Away: Capitalism’s effect on Japan, Environmental issues, and notably, Chihiro’s coming of age story.

From what I know, the idea of time passing differently in spirit worlds, is more based on western stories of the fae. 

But something more common in Japanese folklore is spirit trickery/deception. Or more accurately. What you see, isn’t always what’s actually there.  Chihiro starts this story as a young child, before her coming-of-age arc, that more or less forces her to become ‘an adult’. More accurately. The challenges she faces makes her mature as a person. What’s the most common thing in folklore? Children see what’s actually there.