True Toys

Penny Cooper was very excited when I read this (below). She has sometimes been called not real.

"We are true," she says. "And we are dolls! It's not a trick."

"[G K Chesterton, in his autobiography] explains that the transforming event of his early life was watching puppet shows in a toy theatre that his father had made for him:

"If this were a ruthless realistic modern story, I should of course give a most heart-rending account of how my spirit was broken with disappointment, on discovering that the prince was only a painted figure.
But this is not a ruthless realistic modern story.
On the contrary, it is a true story.
And the truth is that I do not remember that I was in any way deceived or in any way undeceived.
The whole point is that I did like the toy theatre even when I knew it was a toy theatre. I did like the cardboard figures, even when I found they were of cardboard.
The white light of wonder that shone on the whole business was not any sort of trick. . . ."

--"The Back of the World: The troubling genius of G. K. Chesterton", Adam Gopnik, New Yorker 7/7/2008, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/07/07/the-back-of-the-world 

(Magicians say children are harder to trick than adults--they are watching more closely.)

I started girlette portraits, inspired by the doll paintings of Sarah at Circles of Rain---her Madeline portrait).
Here's Lucy, looking like she has a bandaged head wound, and SweePo as "Diver", looking like a scary clown, which she very much is not.

Even if each one is not-quite-right, I think they have charm as a set. And the girlettes love having their portraits done, so I will carry on.