I have this giant painting I bought second-hand years ago.
It’s a print on canvas called “Before Nightfall” and when I first saw it I was like, “I love how ambiguous this painting is” and the guy selling it was like, “Yeah, why is she catching a bird in a wedding dress?” and I was like, “Oh, to me it looks more like she’s going to free the bird from the guilded cage but has been caught in the act by probably the same person who has caged her and she’s wondering if she should fly away too” and he was like, “Huh. Maybe?” And then I said, “Or maybe she’s going to eat the bird because she’s hunched over it like a predator and she looks a little like I do when it’s 3am I’ve been caught in front of the fridge with a burrito I’m not supposed to eat” and he said…”I’m not sure-” and I said “Like maybe she’s a vampire and she’s really hungry and she’s already murdered everyone and wants dessert? Or maybe she’s some kind of ethical monster and she doesn’t want to eat the people she’s with at the party but she’s desperate so she sneaks into the bedroom to eat their parakeet but then she’s spotted by the mean girlfriend of the guy she likes and she’s like “Aw fuck” and is trying to decide if she should make up an excuse or just eat the girlfriend?” And the guy was like, “I don’t…um…what?” And then I offered him half of the price he was asking and he took it, and Victor wasn’t sure if it was because I’d baffled they guy or if he was now afraid that he was selling some sort of a haunted bird-devouring vampire painting.
Aaaaanyway (out of ADD meds, sorry) we moved a few months ago to a smaller house and I finally found a spot for this painting but then I noticed that there was what looks to be blood splattered and smeared all over this painting.
And I started wondering if maybe a murder had occurred when our old house was for sale and Victor told me I needed to stop watching so much Dateline and that it was probably just diet code so I just took pictures in case a detective needed it later and then I started scrubbing the painting but the blood (?) was not coming off and I was like, “OH THIS PAINTING IS DEFINITELY HAUNTED.”
But then I did a reverse look-up of the painting to see what it was supposed to look like without all of the blood and turns out the blood is part of the original painting. Or maybe it’s not blood and it’s burnt umber paint added to give it atmosphere? Or maybe it really is supposed to be a vampire attack and I was picking up on all of the subtle clues? Or maybe the artist was murdered as she was finishing the piece and never had a chance to clean it? Or, more likely, she spilled her diet coke on it and was like, “FUCK IT I GIVE UP. JUST LEAVE IT”?
Anyway, I don’t have an ending for this but I thought I’d ask your opinion about what you think this painting is about and also say that if you haven’t finished as much as you wanted to today, at least you didn’t spend an hour trying to scrub an art piece that is supposed to look like that after you took pictures of it in case it was evidence of a murder that never happened.
it’s 100% blood and she 100% ate the parakeet and it’s now giving her an upset stomach. LOVE.
I think she looks like you
I’m going with she let the bird go free and she wished it was her being free instead of getting married, also.
OR….Perhaps she is a shift changer and in her animal form she is a white bird with brown feathered head that was caught and put in the cage. As she started to resume her human form, she opened the cage, slipped out and finished changed just as the man who caught her opened the door…and was wondering where she came from and what did she do with his rare bird? Blood splatters from a scrape while squeezing out of the cage as she started to change.
This is a master tutorial in the art of negotiation. Well done.
Also, NEVER stop watching Dateline or collecting evidence of possible murders. When the police are thanking you one day and you’re being interviewed on Dateline for breaking a case, Victor and all the naysayers will be eating their words.
I have no idea what this picture is about but I absolutely love it!! I don’t think it is haunted, I don’t really believe in that. But I did live in a house that a young man blew his head off in. I didn’t know that when we bought the place. But when the mailman so kindly told me all about it, in gruesome detail, I went and sat in the room with my cat and he just went to sleep so no haunting. How does Hunter S. respond to the painting? I trust a cats judgment completely!!
All I know is when I first looked at the painting I wondered whether you were going say she was getting ready to poop on the birdcage.
Initially, I definitely saw it as the woman freeing the bird from the cage because the bird was trapped as she was by marriage. But have you ever heard the folklore around selkies? It’s a Celtic myth about seal women called selkies. Men would trap them in human form by stealing their sealskin. They’d force the selfie to marry them and have their children by hiding and locking away their sealskins so the selfie could never return to the sea. Understandably, this pissed off the selkies just a bit, and if one ever found her skin again, she’d immediately abandon her family and return to the sea. This woman could have been some type of bird instead of a selkie. But she’s been reunited with what she needs to regain her true form.
I also think she looks kind of like you – like a cousin maybe?
Before I read your post, my first thought about the picture was, “Oh, jeez, that bird is a goner.” I absolutely thought the next frame would be the woman with feathers sticking out of her mouth like a cartoon cat.
This is one of things that shows how art interpretation is in the eye of the viewer. From a bird lover: I think she got busted playing with the friendly bird instead of being at the party with the people. And the stuff on the wall is the food and water spatter from the bird because any bird owner can tell you how messy our feathered friends can be. And also her dress is very dirty – girl’s been out in the yard checking in on the ducks too. Bird lovers can be a strange folk indeed. 🙂
The bird is actually a trained undercover agent with a camera implant in one eye, and it recorded the murder that put the blood on the wall. Its cover was blown and it was hastily shoved into a cage to be dealt with later. The girl is the secret agent sent to help it escape (cuz birds will sing like a canary when confronted). The only way she could get into the room to save the bird was to attend the fancy cocktail party that delayed the host from killing the bird. Alas, someone just opened the door thinking it was the bathroom and she had not yet reached the open window. The intruder is asking her, “Why do you have that bird so close to your crotch?” She’s still trying to come up with a plausible excuse…
Also? Dorothy Barker says she would’ve totally eaten that bird.
Okay I kind of love answer number 12 Anonymous came up with personally when I saw it before I read your comment I thought the bird was going to be snack and clearly she’s been caught and is now deciding if she makes up an excuse or if she just eats the person who caught her instead of the bird
I know nothing about art, only what I like, but I absolutely love this painting. To me, it looks like she’s freeing the bird, which probably symbolizes the freedom she herself wants.
I think the woman in the painting is freeing the bird the way she wants to be free…as does the female artist…BUT her husband/boyfriend saw this painting she had done and realized she (the artist) was going to escape too so he killed her with a knife and the blood on the painting is hers. That’s just my sick opinion….I LOVE your method of getting that painting for half price and freaking out the seller…I’ll have to try it.
I love how your mind works.
Freeing the bird for sure. Dorothy looks spooked though so maybe she does have a nefarious plan. Dorothy be like, “what the fuck mom?”
Hands down the best post I’ve read for months😂
The woman is the bird. She’s been let of the bird cage, free at least, but she’s not free because she’s been married off to a man. That’s why she looks unsure of what she’s meant to be doing. The door is still open on the cage, and she kind of wants to go back in there, instead of getting married.
I think she’s RESCUING the bird and I assumed that’s a wedding dress (but where’s the veil and string of pearls – no matter) and that she doesn’t actually want to marry (or be at some stuffy party) left one room for another, discovered a CAT (I see a paw print on the wall at the very top and perhaps one just to the left) accosting the bird in its cage and took the bird out of the cage to release him – as they are kindred spirits – neither of them in circumstances of their own making/wanting. The painting appears to be a “photo” of a moment in time – both caught in their shared escape.
Definitely freeing the bird because she feels she’s also about to be caged in a marriage she doesn’t want but getting caught in the act and then she’s like ‘damn I hope they don’t spot the blood on the wall from when I killed my fiancé earlier’
Or maybe I’m just projecting 😉
My therapist and I read Let’s Pretend for one of our sessions. I raved about it so much that it became HER homework. He he, sneaky little bipolar I am! I’ve read it several times since you published it so no hardship for me!
i followed all of this, thinking “i understand all of this… should i be worried that i understand all of this?” then you got to the scrubbing the painting part and i think it broke my brain.
now i’m in a loop. how do you scrub blood from a painting? is it like dressing a deer, in that it’s nothing like you think it’s going to be and it’s going to end badly for someone? is it actual scrubbing – like with a sponge and soap & water? wouldn’t soap & water kind of ruin the painting? so it *is* like dressing a deer because there actually is blood involved and it’s definitely going to end badly for someone.
i really wish i drank wine. or even just had some ice cream in the house.
She’s free, the bird has been rescued, now she has to run for her life. Such a poetic commentary on freedom and its dangers.
She is so thin, she may have needed a life-saving snack in a hurry. She felt bad, it didn’t sit well. She decided to start eating better, bring protein bars with her, make amends to the birds family and offer to replace their beloved bird and signed legal documents to stay away from future events at their home. No charges were filed. She made amends and will put this experience behind her.
Her captor brings her a caged bird every day. Hence the dried blood already on the wall.
The real question is why is there no newspaper at the bottom of the birdcage? Of course, who reads print newspaper, but there definitely should be a birdcage liner of some sort. Wait, maybe the blood on the wall is really birdshit and blood and she realizes a) she shouldn’t have fed the bird live mealworms and b) how is she going to explain this to her future mother-in-law?
I’m sorry. I cannot top your stories of the painting. I cannot even try. But now I am completely fascinated by that painting.
The painting, at least one looking like it, doesn’t appear to have blood on it. If I had ordered a painting online, and it arrived unexpectedly with blood on it, haunted or unhaunted, it would be going back. I’m not paying, or displaying, for someone’s unsafe work environment!
https://www.wayfair.ca/decor-pillows/pdp/chelsea-art-studio-before-nightfall-by-chelsea-art-studio-painting-left8231.html
I see a giant rabbit and some sort of bear/wolf behind her on the left. Maybe they’re part of the story.
Ah, is it blood? Or did the bird have explosive diarrhea before he was birdnapped? We may never know.
OMG—THIS IS WHY I LOVE YOU SO MUCH! I’m sorry for shouting, but it’s so rare that someone else sees all the dark-but-perfectly-plausible possibilities like I do, and it feels warm and comfy to me that I’m not alone. Thank you.
Did nobody notice that Dorothy Barker has an similar angle to her head and expression on her face as the woman in the painting? Maybe it’s Dorothy in another lifetime when she was in a human body?
And that the spatters on the wall behind the woman looks like an outline of a face and small body?
It could be blood, or mud, because the woman’s dress is very dirty on the bottom of it.
I’m not sure it’s a wedding dress, there no veil, it could be a debutant dress.
The woman looks like somebody caught her in the act of doing something… but what?
Who is the artist?
When was it painted?
Why is the dress and the wall dirty but the birdcage is so clean?
So many questions….
But I’m an empath, and I don’t get an uneasy feeling from it, just slightly sad, so I don’t think it’s haunted or if it is, that it means any harm.
Animals are often empaths too, so if none of your animal family members mind it, then it’s probably ok.
I was thinking she was the newly escaped caged bird and her dress was her “tail”
Well, if you look at the blood splatter or (Diet Coke if you will), the direction seems to suggest it came from lower on the floor. From this view it indicates the bloodstain comes originally from there and sweeps upward. Similar to patterns one sees in which a knife was used slashing a throat let’s say one side of the neck and slashing upwards, thus leaving the splatter we see.
Or perhaps a chainsaw or pizza cutter was used. I do like a scythe and sickle, my favourite.
You know Jenny
Sometimes a painter just says: I’ve worked on this for months I’m done with this sh..t.
Your brain works like mine! I love you!
I would hang it and probably come up with a different story/theory/idea…whatever wheneveri looked at it. Maybe there was a fairy riding the back of the bird, or is the bird a fairy in disguise? Or maybe it’s a leprechaun in disguise and it doesn’t want you to get it’s gold. My brain is firing and spewing a plethora of different concepts/creations/ideas or whatever.
I dunno, Jenny. That sounds very productive to me. 😅 And I loved the Dateline reference. This, after Nate Bergatze’s routine last night, i feel very seen.
I loved every version of your exploration of the meaning of the piece.
Here’s my thoughts, while she kind of looks dressed in a gown, it also might just be the corset and petticoats. Maybe she was dressing for the wedding when she realized it was a mistake so she grabs her bird to send a message to the one man she could always count on when she was in need. The bird will fly to him since he gave her the bird once upon a time.
She looks watchful and scared because she is afraid of being discovered.
She definitely needs a sandwich.
I saw prints of this online for between $600 and over $1,000 … so it seems like you got a really good deal? But nothing about either the artist or the painting itself?
I was so enthralled with your painting and your scenarios about it that I totally burned the bacon I was frying. The room is now filled with smoke, but it was worth it to finish reading your post. 🤪
I don’t know, but your typo of “diet code” seems somehow poetic.
(Ha! Now I don’t even want to fix it. ~ Jenny)
Very entertsining. I agree she is probably a ckassy vampire. Blood is possibly from a fight with a cat or two. Then she changed and came back to pose with bird!
I fucking love you. That’s all. Ahah omg I so need this 😘
I immediately thought she was freeing the caged bird because she was caged. But I love your other interpretations!
Bloody hysterical interpretations and reinterpretations…………..stay off your meds haha
Definitely Bluebeard’s wife in the forbidden room.
Jenny, I loved how you confounded a man so much that he let you have the painting for half price. I like the blood. Now you need to write a short story.
She’s in undergarments, not a dress – that’s clearly a crinoline of some sort. Very odd design but it’s like a crinoline with that big band to contain the poofiness at the top, and then like a tight strapless sheath dress just shoved down over it. 100% not a wedding outfit, but maybe in preparation for the actual dress? Or having shucked it somewhere?
I agree with Heather that the lower portion of the crinoline is muddy or soiled, though not with blood, so that begs yet another question of where the hell she’s been for that to have happened.
The stains on the wall are NOT blood – anyone who’s ever tried to clean blood off the wallpaper knows it dries way, way darker than that.
Having said that, she is scary as shit and *something* is going down here that I want no part of.
There is ZERO fear in her face – her posture is secretive but her face is not afraid in the slightest. To me it says, “I was doing something I didn’t want you to see, but now you have, and I might have to eat you too and I’m thinking about how I prefer to do that.”
For anyone who wants to know, the artist is Sarah Atkinson and the piece is The Bird Keeper: https://account.grandimage.com/product.php?artwork_id=22012&src=artist&pos=122
(I love that you found her! So weird that the title she gave it isn’t the one that it sells under online, but her title makes more sense. ~ Jenny)
Maybe the artist shook the can thinking it was her paint, and then opened it. But it was her diet coke and it exploded everywhere. And that’s when she realized that it wasn’t paint, it was diet coke. She cleaned everything up but didn’t notice it got on the painting.
And that’s why it looks like that.
I honestly thought she was freeing the bird and got caught. That’s as far as I got before I started reading. 🤣
I asked Google about a “painting called before nightfall of a bride holding a bird taken from a cage behind her.”
Google said “There isn’t a well-known painting titled “Before Nightfall” that features a bride holding a bird taken from a cage; however, there are several paintings that feature similar imagery, such as Joseph Wright of Derby’s An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump.”
That is not a picture I could imagine hanging on my wall: it “depicts a scientist performing an experiment where a bird is placed in a glass container and the air is removed to create a vacuum, demonstrating the life-sustaining need for air and exploring themes of life, death, and scientific curiosity.”
And it’s nothing like your picture.
The cat who ate the canary?
I think she IS a Vampire who has just fed, hence the blood on the wall, and she is stealing the bird because it’s owner has just died. She plans to let the bird go free, because no one should live in a gilded cage. it’s still a cage!
Anonymous .52
Thank you so much for the link, I found the artist and her other artworks, apparently she has a fascination for birds and a woman in a strapless dress, often white, and she has painted other images similar to this, which sort of resemble the artist herself.
See link
https://account.grandimage.com/product_list.php?type=artist&artist_id=396
Isn’t it wonderful how art can inspire so many interesting stories inside our heads?
She’s definitely up to something and fearless about being caught. I’m wondering if she had anything to do with the disappearance of Dorothy Barkers papillon ear ‘wings’
I’m going to go with the Diet Coke/bloodstain combo thing because it doesn’t make sense without the other. Oh well it could be blood spattered because she trying to save the bird from her pet vampire and that’s why she has the injury on the back of her arm.
I’m adding to this story because she looks like she has a cut on the back of her arm and she’s turning away from danger. The cut is so recent that it hasn’t bleed onto her white dress yet.
She is definitely surprised by the action she is currently witnessing
I wish I knew how to share pictures but this reminds me of a time several years ago when I was volunteering at a charity sale and texted my husband a photo of a creepy painting. He came to the sale and bought the painting as a surprise (yikes!) and I wouldn’t let him hang it on the main floor but I said he could hang it in the basement. So he hung it directly on the wall at the bottom of the stairs so it looked even more creepy since it was at the bottom of a stairwell. Anyway a few weeks later my Roomba committed suicide (boticide?) and threw herself down the stairs after years of successfully avoiding that same stairwell. I still blame the painting. Proceed with caution, Jenny Lawson!
Maybe I’m too practical but follow me here. She really LIKES her bird but it doesn’t like her so it keeps spraying shit on the wall on purpose all the way from its cage (because birds are kind of assholes and like to get revenge by shitting on things) so she’s like OH HELL NO NOT ON MY WEDDING DRESS YOU ASSHOLE BIRD and now she’s on her way to chuck it out the window. In a way, this is a happy ending all around because the bird gets its freedom and her dress doesn’t get shit one. Probably:)
OK, so I just finished The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn (STRONG RECOMMEND) and … YES. all the YES.
I just love that Dorothy Barker looks like she’s in on whatever is happening in the painting and she’s not going to tell you what it all means.
I think it’s likely that the place holding the gilded cage is supposed to look a little ragged and ugly (because no matter how pretty the cage is being caged isn’t) and she is setting the bird free from the cage. But I like the vampire scenario better…”Just a little snack to tide me over…oh, fuck, now I have to eat you too.”
She a birds eater but she has extremely bad allergies to it and the cage had 4 love birds And now she has to go the bathroom because the poor birds have given her the run and the blood is hers and she was crying blood tears like all vampires and birds eaters since she was very sad to have eaten those birds because she loves their singing 🎶 😢 💔
Pretty sure Dorothy Barker has all the answers to this mystery. I mean, LOOK at her. She knows, I tell you, she knoooooooows….
Wait a minute, isn’t this a painting of Jennifer Lawrence after she fell down the stairs at the Oscars?
I love how your mind works…
When she escaped from the cage, she returned to her true form, still hunched over from the years stuck behind bars.
I thought that that poor starving girl needed a snack.
Definitely goth horror movie vibe
I have luminal if you need help.
She’s definitely eating that bird.
Maestra Jenny, if you’d been my Art Appreciation prof at UCLA, I’d have dropped earth sciences and become an art major.
She’s in a wedding dress but no ring. She realizes she doesn’t want to be trapped like the bird in the cage, so her and the bird were going to make a run for it before the ceremony, but she was caught in the act.
Despite the blood and fingerprints on the walls, there isn’t blood on her fingers or the bird she holds. Someone else killed the other bird and she is rescuing this one. She’s afraid, but holds the bird protectively in front of her. Her dress was white, but has been soiled, and she’s holding the bird where she is because that’s a significant part of her that was being held as captive/ slave, and she’s going to set herself free.
Her dress looks rather soiled, so she’s clearly a vampire who just climbed out of the graveyard and grabbed the first living thing she could find. The innocent bird, but the blood on the wall shows that the bird is not that innocent and has clearly murdered before because of the telltale blood splatters. This lady vampire has chosen the wrong victim, the bird will take her down too….but wait…do vampires have blood running through their veins? The poor bird may not get anything for all it’s hard work murdering. Man, life is tough.
Clearly this woman needs to eat a cheeseburger but will settle for a chicken nugget… Ohhhh lol