Young(er) Yubaba - Spoke Art Gallery

Young(er) Yubaba 12x18″ Acrylic on paper 2020 for Spoke Art’s Miyazaki In NYC exhibition, which due to the pandemic took place online. I imagined that since the Yubaba we meet in Spirited Away is super old, a 65 yr old Yubaba would be young (and not powerful enough yet to fly), and that she quarreled with her father the proprietor of the bathhouse for the last time and set out for the train station with her luggage destined for Paris in the Human World. There, living in the scenic Montmartre quartier atop Paris she falls in love with an Argentine wizard, drinking wine and laughing into the night with the well dressed artistic crowd. Her father falls ill and her twin sister Zaniba (10 seconds younger) is too irresponsible to run the bathhouse. Torn between familial duty and intense Human World Parisian love, she returns to the Magic World to become proprietress of the bathhouse, with the bitterness of her sacrifice hardening her heart more each day until we meet her in Spirited Away.