Still

12x6, pastel

Being still for a model session always amazes me as I can't stay still for 30 minutes and that includes sleeping.  One thing that does happen to the model is the lack of expression.  To sit for a period of time takes it right out and I find the model is far far away in thought and separate from there bodies in a way.  The goal along with being a good model is to stay as still as possible.  I just find we lose just a little of that spark or spirit that as an artist I hope to bring to my painting.  Can't have it all.

"A VISIT WITH MARY"

12x6, oil on panel, $125.00

Continuing along on our vacation in Chicago we spent some time in the Art Institute of Chicago.  Never enough time to really get how magnificent the collections are, that are housed in this beautiful building.  If I could, I would pick one painting a day and sit, admire, study it and maybe draw from it, to get in the head of the artist;  now that would be an experience.  

Mary Cassatt's work is glorious to behold.  Her attention to relationship not only in composition, but the timeless relationship of mother and child brings tears to my eyes.  The beauty of the flesh as I observed standing and looking is so wonderfully lifelike and pulls away from the canvas as if to be touched.  Oh I am breathless.  I don't begin to copy, but merely suggest her intimate painting, "The Bath", 1891-92.  My husband was quite taken with this painting and I could not resist the chance to record the impression it made.