Vleermeisje (Bat Girl)

A young woman with great black bat-wings, framed like kites from bamboo and leather, beats a drum in a dim green room. The bat has always been the in-between animal, neither bird nor mouse, a creature of dusk and transformation. Beside her sits a nautilus shell, which grows in a flawless logarithmic spiral and was so prized in the Renaissance that goldsmiths mounted whole shells as jewelled drinking cups. Her wings, though, are unmistakably homemade, which makes her a shed-built Icarus, and the painting catches that very human itch to fly stitched together out of bamboo, leather and longing.