Contemporary Drawings
by Michelle Flanagan

Life, it's like a box of chocolates...
cheap, thoughtless, purfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for...
Unreturnable because all you ever get back is another box of chocolates
So you're stuck with this...undefineable whipped, mint crap
that you mindlessly wolf down til' there's nothing left to eat...
Sure once in a while it's a peanut butter cup...english toffee...
...but they're gone too fast and the taste is... fleeting
So you end up with nothing but broken bits
filled with hardened jelly and teeth shattering nuts
...if you're desperate enough to eat those all you've got left is
an empty box filled with useless.. brown.. paper wrappers.

The X-Files was one the best television shows, I believe, ever made! One of my favorite, recurring characters was 'Cancer Man' or 'cigarette smoking man' played by actor William B. Davis. The text above is paraphrased from a scene in an episode which revealed some background information and insight into the 'dark' character. Dissallusioned, and sitting alone on a bench in an alley, he gives a monologue of his version of the 'life is like a box of chocolates' analogy. Like most of the writing on that show, I thought it was brilliant.

The monologue inspired my self-portrait drawing titled, Summer's Coming, done in the winter of 2003. I rarely incorporate text in my drawings, but I was overwhelmed and driven to make a drawing about this version of, 'Life is like a box of chocolates'. It complemented, perfectly, the disposition of the figure that was already in my mind.

Visit The Official X-Files Website!