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Shaun Tan - "Never Give Your Keys to a Stranger" - oil on canvas
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Never Give Your Keys to a Stranger
Oil on canvas by Shaun Tan (2012).
Artwork size: 86 x 76 cm (33.9" x 29.9)
Frame size: 88.5 x 78.5 x 4.7 cm (34.8" x 30.9" x 1.9")
"What originally began as the novelty of making an unusual new friend took a sinister turn once the younger brother was sketched outside the loungeroom, watching TV through a window, which is for some reason a very evocative concept for me, that hard division of inside and outside worlds. The big cat-person, wearing a suit and relaxing as if at the end of an ordinary working day, is very open to interpretation. It may have been inspired by the fact that most of my youth spent on a couch has involved a cat nearby, although more recently this has been a parrot and a budgie (drawings of rooms with big parrots or budgies recur in my sketchbooks too) and now a boston terrier. In any case, like other animals in the book, you can never know what a cat is thinking, they are nothing if not enigmatic."
"Clearly the new guest has displaced the younger brother, either casually or aggressively, we can’t say where the fault lies exactly. That’s further complicated by the sentence ‘never give your keys to a stranger’, so it’s quite possible that the cat-person was originally invited by the younger boy. The older one does not appear to mind one way or the other, which may be the most significant failing, either an accidental or deliberate obliviousness. I also like the impression that the older brother may be mesmerized in some way by the television (the programming of which is another mystery – a special cat show?) but the fact that the boy’s shadow has become catlike might suggests a slightly sinister psychological immersion. Whether that is voluntary or not remains also unknown; for me these ‘blanks’ are the most interesting part of any narrative image; they feel familiar to me without offering any explanation." —Shaun Tan