Christine, Against the Mirror
Oil on Linen Panel, 20x16"
This is the same woman who posed for this painting. She is in front of an eight foot wide by four foot high mirror in the Saturday studio. (Actually it's Eleanor Speiss-Ferris' studio. Please look at her work.) She is a tall, willowy woman with a square jaw and an exotic look. She could be a fashion model but the fashion dictators would probably make her lose weight. She is very slender but not skeletal so the dictators would consider her to be fat.
I think it's obvious from this portrait the she is quite beautiful. I think I caught a more accurate likeness of her than in the previous work. So, dear viewer, you can judge the fact of what I consider to be her obvious beauty for yourself.
She is beautiful, a bit like Sigourney Weaver. An interesting background, I like the reflection, the diagonals, and part of a person. (It's a tossup between this background and the patterns.)
ReplyDeleteI think Sigourney Weaver is a fair comparison. She is tall and angular too. As for the background, I like reflections as much as I like pattern so this puts me on, not a new, but a different jag.
ReplyDeleteDid you look at Eleanor's work? What do you think? I think you and she have some things in common.
ReplyDeleteYes, i can see that 'bone-structure' beauty that fashion designers like to drap their creations on. Though the beauty is as much in the intellegent and focused gaze.
ReplyDeleteThe undelyinging structure also comes through nicely around the collar bone and sternum.
In passing, i wonder if the ultra-thin model isn't just the creation of the Lagefelds, but also of a kind of competion between women. Or maybe just a misdirected sense of having control over something, anything, even if it's only body weight. Or is it an inverted sense of guilt, the West obese while the Somalia starves. They have no choice in bone structures they are obliged to expose. But i digress.
Back to the painting. I also love the little touch of the guy behind in blue intent on drawing, enough to create a social context.
A lovely treat for my return, Davida.
I think it's the same syndrome as the crazy attack on women's reproductive rights. No sex education, no birth control, no health services, no human papiloma vaccine. It might encourage women to have a choice on their sexual lives. It's about power and control over women. Who will make choices for women's lives? For some, women should not have the agency to make the decisions for themselves. All the moralistic agruments are meaninglesss since in the scheme of things nothing is more trivial than who is having sex with whom as long as it's between consenting adults.
ReplyDeleteMake people feel there is something inherently wrong about themselves (advertisers are doing this to men too) and you have control over them. Religion does the same thing with doctrines of sinfulness. Sex is such a basic need after eating and sleeping that once that is demonized and people are fearful enough about the "consequences" then you've got 'em.
The religious stuff is breaking down if current trends continue. The consumer stuff is still so ubiquitous as to be part of the natural surroundings. It's how advertisers sell stuff no one needs.
You also have them if they fear death. The recent uprisings in Egypt, Libya, and Syria are signs that people feel they have nothing left to lose so death is not so fearsome. It makes them free enough to fight back. Once a population feels that they have nothing left to lose, the powers that be should be very afraid.