Mother Goose

Perhaps Mother Goose is an imaginary character who made her way into children's poems; perhaps she was a real person in Boston who sang jingles to her children and grandchildren; perhaps she was a French queen who spun tales.

 

The rhymes and stories that are attached to her name have survived for hundreds of years, traced back to the seventeenth century.  Each of us carries some Mother Goose in us. From Pat a Cake to Three Blind Mice, from Humpty Dumpty to Old Mother Hubbard, these simple rhymes often bring up memories of childhood.

My Mother Goose is more about the flight of imagination that is stirred by hearing tales than about the old lady herself. We have different images in our heads when we hear stories or rhymes, whether nonsense of reality. I love the image of Mother Goose riding through the air when she "wanted to wander":

Old Mother Goose,

When she wanted to wander,

Would ride through the air

On a very fine gander.

Jack's mother came in,

And caught the goose soon,

And mounting its back,

Flew up to the moon.

  This Mother Goose doll wears a hat that imitates the Canada Goose; her boots are painted with goose feet. She has a painting of a goose holding a book on her torso; feathers cover her arms and her back so that she may fly. The Canada Goose is quite beautiful with its white marks against the black head and neck. Brown feathers make up its wings while its body is covered with a pale brown down. The Canada Goose winters here in New Mexico - we can often see them in fields near the river.

 

The doll is about 14 inches tall (if she were to stand), and is articulated with buttons and beads. She's made from paperclay (head and torso), air-dry modeling clay (her hat), cloth, acrylic, and other mixed media. Her hair is black Tibetan lambswool.

 

She sits on a shelf which is painted with a couple more geese and words from the poem. She's available in my Etsy shop: Allegromelody.etsy.com -  please let me know if you have any questions!