I was inspired by the history of Mary’s Lamb for all my 4 final compositions.

Many of the nursery rhymes are believed to be associated with actual events in history, and Mary’s Lamb is one of them. This rhyme itself was created or inspired by an actual incident. So Mary was real and her name was Mary Sawyer. She took her pet lamb to school one day at the suggestion of her brother. That morning, a young man named John Roulstone was very much pleased with the incident of the lamb and he rode across the fields on a horse back to the school house the next day and handed Mary a slip of paper which had the original 3 stanzas of the rhyme on it.

By brining the history of Mary’s Lamb back to life, I made use of horses and an army of lambs in my compositions. All giving a sense of royalty and noble vibe, with Mary and Lambs looking really poise in every composition.

I used the last stanza of the rhyme for my final 4 compositions.
“And you each gentle animal
In confidence may bind,
And, make them follow at your call,
If you are aways kind.”

 

For this first composition, lambs are gentle animals and the lambs in this image here are anthropomorphic and they were in portrait, giving off a confident vibe. I portrayed binding as an action of knitting and the product they were knitting looks like a french braid which requires 3 bundles of hair, which I just so happened to have 3 portrait figures of lambs in this composition as well.

The spiral here shows that the Lambs were being hypnotized as they followed each other towards the Lamp. The Lamp here is a metaphor of Mary. Lamp gives off light and light symbolizes hope and goodness, and kindness will also fall in place there.It is like Mary is calling and drawing her Lambs to her with her kindness.

(There is always a light at the end of the tunnel).

 

Here is Mary and her Lamb in an anthropomorphic form again, but this time as John Roulstone in its history. Both of them look like royalties and they are binded together with a twine and horses around. Horses are also gentle animals and to me, they represent power, kindness and confidence.

 

The foreground is a portrait of Mary and her Pet Lamb and her Lamb looked very well trained here (probably because of its upright posture). I placed a repetition of the same lamb at back ground to represent Mary’s army or Lambs who make me feel like they are waiting for her call or orders. Linear perspective can be seen too with the Lambs ear pointing diagonally down to Mary and her Pet Lamb. This draws our attention to them despite the loud back ground.

I have 4 more sets of compositions that I have printed out. Most of them were also placed/blue-tac-ed alongside with my 4 main compositions on presentation day.

Here are the extra fours:

This 4 compositions were derived by playing along with the rhyme, re-inventing the images to bring forth some newness to various parts of the rhyme.

 

Snow white is ‘the fairest of them all’. Hence I used images of her here to show that the Lamb’s fleece is as white as hers. I overlapped them in a way that they will form a shape of an apple.

 

 

I personally like this composition here. I did not included this into my final 4 compositions as I felt that it will break the flow or theme of my main compositions above. Mary in the rhyme reminded my of Mary Poppins. Below is an image of a bag of lamb fleece and it reminded me of popcorns, where the lambs can be seen to be ‘Popping away with Mary Poppins’!

 

Mary here is made up of a flower vase(her head and body), seashell(her skirt) and flower(her legs). The Lambs were lingering near Mary and Mary seem to be on the cover page of a book (assuming a school book from the teacher who turned her Lamb out of class). The fact that she is not in the cover of the book anymore (middle of composition), shows that she have finally appeared, out of the book.

 

 

The composition here is inspired from a letter where you will see a stamp the top right hand corner. The stamp here is an image of a shield. This symbolizes the protection from all harm. The Lamb here is resting its head on Mary’s shoulder/under her chin which protrayed its trust with Mary. The flowers at the back looks like Mary’s hand wrapping over her Lamb.

 

Printed out compositions on the day of presentation!

 

And lastlyyy a selfie with my 4 main compositions. Teehee.