Medium: Watercolor on paper

Date : 1982, 2025

Mini Me's

By Jay Ells

This week’s piece, Mini Me’s, came to life in a quiet moment of reflection—one of those days when I felt all my different selves sitting with me in the studio. The joyful one. The tired one. The guarded, the ridiculous, the still-hopeful. I began to sketch, not with intention, but with intuition. What emerged was a surreal gathering of small beings—each one a fragment of me, yet each also something beyond me.

I went to my first therapist, friend of a friend, and of Jungian persuasion.  Due to heavy work assignments, I had not picked up a pencil to draw for seven years.  I said, “What can you do for me?”  She said, “We will find all the little people that live inside you!”  I went right home and drew the little people I thought we could find within me. This is Mini Me’s. I inked it in 1982, painted it in 2025.

This piece is a portrait of the inner multiplicity we all carry: the selves we perform, the ones we suppress, the ones we nurture and the ones we pretend not to hear. It’s soft and strange, gentle but charged, inviting you into a quiet constellation of odd familiarity.

Each figure in Mini Me’s represents an emotional archetype distilled down into a whimsical, childlike form.

In the top left, a tiny mouse peeks out from a spherical pot, nurturing a blooming stem crowned with balloon-like orbs. This is the nurturer, the innocent curator of joy. It speaks to the fragile optimism that insists on growth, even from enclosed or limited circumstances. The balloons—red, blue, and yellow—could be seen as playthings or distant planets, signifying both celebration and unreachable ideals. As a 5 -year old boy I was given an antique soup bowl with these balloons which I found exciting and memorable.

The large, active figure in the center—the robot—commands attention. With jointed limbs, yellow nodes, and a facelessly expressive design, this is the performer-self, equal parts machine and mime. Its exaggerated pose and blank face suggest forced exuberance. It’s animated, but emotionally hollow—dancing from habit rather than joy. A critique of the part of us that runs on routine, smiles on command, functions without feeling. I had daily spankings and one day without thinking I just bit my mom on the cheek as hard as I could. She raised horses who make their objection this way.  We were both surprised, but she did not scold me.

To the right, a clown-like figure stands rigid, holding a miniature replica of itself. This is ego observing ego—a surreal mirror. With its red heart-shaped hat, it appears almost ridiculous, yet its expression is stern, judgmental even. Here, we meet the self-aware critic, the one who watches us perform and asks: Why are you doing this? Who is this really for?

Below, a melancholic feline lies curled around a red ball. Its expression is weary, its body resigned. This is the tired wisdom, the self that has felt too much, seen too much, and now watches life with slow, skeptical eyes. Still, it clings to something small—something playful. A remnant of purpose? A memory of joy?

And in the bottom left, a large yellow dome with wide eyes peers out from the edge of the world. This is the subconscious observer, watching everything unfold but never speaking. It reminds me that not all parts of us are vocal—some are just silently witnessing.

I chose watercolor to preserve the softness of the moment. Each figure is outlined with minimal, almost whimsical ink lines, lending a naive clarity to their forms. The gentle pastels evoke nostalgia, while the empty background emphasizes isolation—the emotional distance between these selves.

I left large swaths of white to create a dreamlike stillness. These “mini me’s” don’t interact. They simply exist, suspended in their own emotional orbits. This negative space represents the disconnection between different parts of our internal identity—a visual depiction of inner fragmentation.

There’s a quiet absurdity to the designs: too odd to be comforting, too sweet to be frightening. I leaned into that contradiction, allowing the tension between humor and melancholy to lead the composition.

The piece invites a subtle, surreal discomfort. You may find yourself smiling at the figures, even as a twinge of unease settles in. That’s intentional. These characters aren’t meant to make you laugh—they’re meant to make you recognize.

We all carry versions of these mini selves: the robot who gets through the day, the cat who longs for softness of touch, the nurturer who still believes, the critic who never stops watching. They are simplified avatars of complexity, portraits of internal contradictions.

This piece doesn't offer resolution. It simply asks us to sit with ourselves—all of ourselves—and notice which mini me is speaking the loudest today.

In every one of us lives a quiet chorus of selves—some bright, some bruised, some still blooming. Often, we try to silence or exile them, hoping to become a single, coherent version of “who we should be.”

But maybe life isn’t about consolidation. Maybe it’s about conversation. Learning to coexist with our own internal audience—without shame, without hierarchy.

So this week, I invite you to notice your own “mini me’s.” Not to fix them. Just to listen.

"I am large, I contain multitudes." – Walt Whitman

And sometimes, those multitudes wear polka dots.