"In My Secret Garden"

"The first of these two paintings, eventually to become a three-part series, was modeled after a photograph of the artist's granddaughter, Jessica Rose, walking around her backyard in her mother's high-heeled shoes. Jessica's single-minded attention to balance made the artist think about a tightrope, and the image was born.
 In "A Little More Fairy Dust," Mary employed the same character, who has since stumbled off her tightrope, to express her own recovery from the accident she had when she slipped going down the spiral staircase to her studio. While tumbling down she knocked over an urn of "Fairy Dust" (which she keeps on hand for a variety of uses, including "blessings" of unsuspecting guests). After arriving at the hospital, where she was given x-rays only to find that she had miraculously escaped serious injury, the doctor noticed that Mary was covered with a mysterious, sparkling dust. Upon receiving an answer about the nature of this unusual substance covering his patient, the amused doctor said, "Well, next time you decide to go flying, try using "A Little More Fairy Dust Please".  In both of these paintings, you will notice two mice, a ladybug and a dragonfly; characters who will all surely appear again in the third painting in the series (which may, perhaps, depict our young heroine flying away with her newly mended wing). The ladybug represents Jessica's mother, Valerie - Mary's oldest daughter - whose nickname when she was a child was "ladybug". This is why a ladybug often appears in paintings that use Jessica as a model; as in real life, Valerie is diligently watching over her daughter. The dragonfly with its gossamer wings represents Mary herself, who as an adult and an artist has taken over the role of the magical beings who transported her to enchanted lands as a child.
Finally, the mice were inspired by two intrepid field mice who for a time raised comedy and havoc in the Baxter - St. Clair household in Hawaii. She named the cross-eyed mouse "Mr. Corrigan" after famous "Wrong-way Corrigan", because whenever startled in the kitchen at night he either ran in circles or, in his confusion, directly at whomever it was he was trying to avoid. "Mrs. Gillespe" was named after Dizzy Gillespe because she had similar problems, including trying to hide in the garbage on several occasions. (For their own safety, the two mice where eventually caught and released in a nearby field.)