Alice Under the Knowledge Tree
By Angela B
Size of Work: A4 (21centimetres wide by 29 centimetres long.)
Media: Coloured Pastel Pencils.
Author: Angela B
The work is landscape style, meaning the page is longer than it is tall. It has a bright yellow background, with visible hand colouring lines.
There is a stylised tree in the centre of the page, occupying the top two-thirds of the paper. The tree has a dark brown pencil outline, and eight branches of various sizes. The branches emerge from the tree trunk and end in zig-zags as if they had been snapped off. The tree trunk and branches are coloured in with visible pencil strokes, in various shades of warm brown.
The tree is covered in fuchsia pink, bright light blue, and orange stars, hearts, and arrow shapes, which appear to grow out of the tree in place of leaves. These shapes are coloured in with coloured pencil, with visible strokes. There are 20 of these shapes in total, growing out of each branch of the tree.
The tree itself is growing out of an open book, resting on its spine. The book is open quite symmetrically, with roughly equal numbers of pages lying open on both the left and right of the tree trunk. The pages of the book are coloured in a repeating pattern of stripes of green and white. The green is in several shades, light through to a mid-green, with obvious hand shading.
In the centre of the book, where the trunk meets the spine, is a half-circle where the title of the work is written: “ALICE under the knowledge tree.” This text is written in dark pencil script, with ALICE all in capital letters and a curly script. ALICE is on one line, with “under the” beneath that, and “knowledge tree” below that.
Under the tree, to the right of the trunk, a girl is sitting, holding one arm outstretched, with that hand holding a book. She is drawn in profile, facing the right. She has long, straight hair, drawn in a caramel coloured pencil. She has light coloured skin and wears round glasses, which are drawn with pink frames. She is wearing a long-sleeved bright blue top, drawn with obvious pencil lines, and a bright pink pair of pants. The style of this portrait is quite simple, non-realistic, with clear pencil lines, shading and colouring in. The pink and blue clothes are drawn in the same pink and blue from the shapes on the tree.
The book she holds in her hand is open and the contents are in shadow.
The mood of the piece is calm and restful, and the pose of the girl is quite relaxed.
She is sitting under the branches of the tree, leaning her back against the trunk, and sitting on top of the open book that the tree grows out from.
I am a Croatian/ Australian woman with schizophrenia and what I wish I could say is that I want to participate in society on on an equal basis with others. I have a voice and I want to use it to contribute to society and make a difference. I want to hold down a job and not be overlooked because I forget things sometimes or my grammar isn't very good because I didn't go to university to get a degree. I hold a TAFE qualification. I want to receive help to achieve my goals and work on an equal basis with other in a harmonious way. Through education we can educate society about people with differences and please don't be angry with me and lose patience with me because I'm different. To educate people about differences is freedom from oppression and a fairer society.
That is what I wish I could say.
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