One foot in front of the other: Carry on, take care of the kids, do the things that you have to do. The determined trudge of this oddly adorable mama opossum resonates well with the resolutely loving, responsible, unglamorous and uncharismatic part of our lives; She’s putting one foot in front of the other and getting through her opossum day.
The blank background symbolizes her myopic, single-minded purpose; all things aside from moving forward are blanked out. It means “Despite everything, do what you have to do”
Interestingly this opossum is one of artist Ty Meier’s most popular images in stickers, greeting cards and small artworks. It came out of a much larger, more complicated artwork called ‘Push’ that had dozens of creatures, but so many people honed in on the opossum that Meier gave it it’s own artwork.
As a creative exercise the blank space comes from Ty dealing with his own Horror Vacuii, a fear of empty space in artwork. Ty likes to fill up the whole canvas with drawing and details and really struggles to leave space empty, so for him this is tough. It’s effective though, illustrating something we all identify with: Despite everything, move forward.
This is a print that Ty mounted to a 8”x10” hand painted craftboard. He applied some clear glossy acrylic medium to the opossum to give it some depth, and then lacquered it heavily to make it a unique, one of a kind artwork.
