"Seasons"

November 7, 2011.

What do Jean Auguste Dominique-Ingres and an unknown sculptor have in common, even if it has been a little over two centuries since their deaths? For one thing, they both won me over with their own ideas, their own individual embodiments, of beauty, art, and balance when I arrived at the Louvre and Musee d'Orsay, respectively...upon my arrival...in Paris a year ago.  February 25, 2010, to be exact.  Once I checked in at my hotel and got settled in, the next thing I wanted to see on my first day of my first ever solo weekend in Europe was that Whitman's Sampler of treats and treasures at the Louvre...and the Orsay...to come face to face with the old masters and the Impressionists that helped make the Art Institute of Chicago one of my favorite hangouts.  A joy since the summer of 1990!

Without a doubt, my cold, windy, rainy Thursday afternoon in the city would have been shot if I did not see the Venus de Milo...and I'm still glad I did! Seeing her porcelain loveliness, shapeliness, and sinuousness on her pedestal not only moved me to take pictures of her from two preferred angles, but also to draw this latest sketch on the train to work, on my fifteen-minute and lunch breaks, and on the train home from work.  You may be wondering why I chose an incognita young lady in a maxi dress for this sketch.  Remembering what I saw in Ingres' Le Source (The Spring) at the Orsay that afternoon, it continues to embody beauty and balance, to quench an artist's thirst for inspiration.  Moreover, we, as human beings, witness and experience the changing of seasons, undergoing a change of temperatures...and temperaments...as well.  Just as the warmth of summer and the mildness of spring tempered my writing and drawing, the coldness and wetness of the fall and winter months add bite, melancholy, and thought to my work just as much...