I’m back from a little trip to Maryland to see my family before I can’t travel anymore. While I was there my sister threw me a baby shower and it was really nice. It was a fun and much needed break from the studio and the computer, but now I’m back and need to get going at full speed.
On the very long flights I started and finished Susan Vreeland’s Girl in Hyacinth Blue. I liked it pretty well and it was different from other art based novels I have read. It was about the stories of the people who owned the Vermeer painting through the years since it was created and how the painting affected them. The story started in modern day and went back into time to the moment of conception. Whenever I’m in museums and looking at artwork or artifacts that have survived through the centuries I always wonder about the human stories behind the pieces. Painting or vessel, everything has a rich story.
I am not comparing myself to Vermeer or anything like that (haha!), but I also wonder about the journals and the paintings that have left my hands. Where are they now? Where have they been? Have they traveled to places that my own eyes will never see? Have they touched someone in a special way? I hope so.
In the afterward, she writes:
We respond to Vermeer because he shows us a part of ourselves. He believed that art-whether it becomes accepted as a masterpiece or not-should speak to the soul, representing a truth so precisely as to make it undeniable to those who glance upon it…
More than ever, we need to find something that makes us pause and look inside, even for a second.
I like that.
Sounds very interesting. The last book I read was The Life of Picasso and that was two years ago.Time flies when your creating art ! 🙂
I loved that book, I thought the concept of learning the stories behind each person or family who had the family was really fascinating. i have a another book, which I haven’t read yet, with a similar type story, only it centers around a house and all of the people who live there over the years.
Glad you seem to be feeling well, when are you due?
oops, meant to say “the painting”, not “the family”
Sheri- Time does seem to fly by, doesn’t it?! I’ll have to look for that book. I love reading books/novels about art and artists.
Tracy-I did enjoy the book a lot because the painting is a character in a sense. A character that outlasts all others.
I’m due early February!
My last novel, Cupid and the Silent Goddess, was my first (and probably my last) about an artist. It’s a fictional account of the painting of Bronzino’s “Allegory with Venus and Cupid” in Florence in 1544-5.
See:
http://www.twentyfirstcenturypublishers.com/index.asp?PageID=496