Twee slapende kabouters achter een deur c. 1928 - 1941

Editor: This is a pen and ink drawing from between 1928 and 1941 by Miep de Feijter, called "Two Sleeping Gnomes Behind a Door." It has a whimsical, almost dreamlike quality to it. The light is so concentrated, it feels like the gnome with the candle is intruding. What do you see in this piece? Curator: The candle is indeed critical. Think of it less as simple illumination, and more as a beacon, piercing the darkness of the unknown, the subconscious. Notice how the light doesn’t simply reveal; it seems to almost *call* to those sleeping figures. Do you think they’re truly asleep, or simply in a state of waiting, or perhaps remembering? Editor: Remembering, maybe? They do seem very still and peaceful, huddled together like that. The figure holding the candle also has a kind of melancholy about him. Is he a guide, or maybe a memory keeper? Curator: Precisely! Consider the gnome at the door – is he merely an observer, or a part of their dream? He’s draped in polka dots. What might those figures signify? He might stand as a bridge between worlds, reality and the land of slumber and maybe memory itself, as well as cultural lore, because Gnomes carry the entire world within. Editor: I never thought of it that way, but it does make the image even more powerful. All the elements work together: light, darkness, waking, sleeping, the character who observes and the observed, with the polka dots being almost like stars on an inverted night. It’s an entire cosmology condensed into one drawing! Curator: And that cosmology speaks to the power of shared stories, enduring symbols passed through generations! I'm delighted this tiny ink drawing opened into something so vast for you.