For Want of a Nail 

Editor: This is "For Want of a Nail" by Scott Gustafson, a fantastical painting, probably acrylic, showing a knight inspecting a horse's hoof, while battle rages in the background. The horse is huge! What a comical juxtaposition of the mundane and the epic. I am so curious about what you see here. Curator: Oh, I see a world steeped in the kind of "what ifs" that tickle my brain. The rhyme "For want of a nail..." speaks volumes. A kingdom lost all for want of a horseshoe nail! Gustafson brings that poem to vibrant life. But, darling, does it strike you as entirely doom and gloom? Editor: Not really, no. There’s something… charming about it. It doesn’t feel tragic. The knight's face is almost comical, like he's mildly inconvenienced more than devastated by impending doom! Curator: Precisely! There's whimsy woven into the fabric of it all. Notice the color choices, that star-spangled blanket on the horse for example. Gustafson isn’t aiming for historical accuracy. He's aiming for a storybook brought to life. Do you think the background war is even real? Or perhaps it is merely a nightmare caused by… a missing nail. Editor: Hmm, I hadn’t considered that. Maybe the battle's just a manifestation of the knight’s anxiety over this darn nail. Like, his internal struggle is being projected outward. I do think the almost hyper-real lighting makes everything seem unreal. Curator: And isn't that the power of art, darling? To make us question the "real," to weave narratives from the seemingly simple moments. This missing nail – a miniature black hole of potential disaster! That horse seems utterly unconcerned. I imagine myself in its head… perhaps that knight can do whatever he needs. As long as I am well-fed. What did you think? Editor: This definitely makes me consider the painting a meditation on priorities, a funny fable of cause and effect!