Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
When the ant falls from his Ant world, that world rolls down after him. It has to. How can an ant still experience his world from so far away? He’s looking around him when beside him it drops and lies quietly on the ground, catching its breath. Now it’s a small world. A humiliated, humbled world, vastly reduced so that now he can see it. It doesn’t have to explode in some fantastic media-driven inferno, though that happens to some ants. It can just – fall from a low height, thud onto the ground, bounce a little, and then lie there, crumbling a bit at the edges. Now the ant knows the graying long-in-the-tooth truth. His world is not so hot. Didn’t hold up, and when it went the sun didn’t stop shining, didn’t take any notice at all. Now he’s gonna have to carry it. Knowing that it isn’t THE world, but only his. Ant World. But how interesting it is. He looks up at the sky, and it’s as if his eyes have turned to prisms, there are worlds everywhere. One world for every ant. All a bit similar, all a bit different. Then his eyes uncross and they’re gone. He looks around to see if he still has the correct number of legs.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
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The red really doesn’t work well on the screen. The mountains are not the same colour. But they’re done now – there are four of them, very nice, I’m going to take them to the furniture store down the road and try to persuade them to use them for their interiors. When it gets less icy. I can’t get my car out of the carpark because the wheels spin on the ice. That’s why people were chipping away at it with picks a few weeks ago, yes. So I take my backpack and walk places until the ice melts a bit.
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Those that concentrate on detail are sometimes called pedant. You see how important the animal/insect world is to our language? Of course with pedantic there is almost a hint of two insects.
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I’m sorry, but if I’m honest I’ll have to say that I like this one least of all Lehan’s paintings here. I get the meaning, but esthetically it does not do anything for me.
I wonder what Donald Brooke (from UL) would have to say about all this š Better not ask!
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I think they look better in the flesh, Helvi. The red doesn’t take to being digitalized very well. There are four in the series, this is the third, the second is lost in emmjay’s inbox, the fourth may come out soon. I am thinking about pink now. All the silver and gold paint is used up, the red is getting low….
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Lehan, I realised that…
Gerard had a painting in the shearing shed, which he had put there among the maybes and possible no-goods. I saved some, one of them now in our bedroom…perfect! Family and friends have asked why we did not put it up earlier.
It was waiting for its rightful home.
Pink and gold sounds good….
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I liked the story too… especially this bit: “One world for every ant. All a bit similar, all a bit different.” Just like humans really…
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Another lovely painting, Lehan! Is it time for all the ‘ant’ jokes one can think of… for example:
Q: what does one call an insect which keeps on correcting one’s grammar?
A: A ped-ANT!
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Q: What do they call the species of ant that lives in Oz?
A: I don’t know. What DO they call the species of ant that lives in Oz?
Q: You mean you DON’T know what they call the species of ant that lives in Oz?
A: No, I don’t know what they call the species of ant that lives in Oz?
Q: An Antipodeant!
A good comedian’s gotta bloat his audience up before the punchline!
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“Sufficiant unto the day, is the punchline thereof…”
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Come Lord Jesus,
our guest to be
and bless these gifts bestowed by Thee.
Amen
Delicious!
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The ant’s world looks uncannily like a human torn in two by some avenging deity!
Love the “patchy” blue and the “patchy” red!
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Once again, Lehan, an astonishing series of observations! Only to be expected, really, from an astonishing artist with an astonishingly penetrating eye. Artist’s eye. Surgeon’s eye. An eye connected with the brain, which is connected to the toe nail and the finger nail and the furthest tip of the hair, and which is connected to planet earth and the firmament above it.
Who would have ever thought that an ant can fall from anywhere? But it can. of course, fall from its very own, ant world!
Truly inspiring, Lehan, many thanks!
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