Here's One I Did Earlier!

In the famous words of Blue Peter …. And here’s one I did earlier …..  Lavender Parfait! 

Lavender Parfait 

As you've probably guessed, my pastel painting hasn’t progressed this week and while flicking through my camera roll this winter work from last winter popped up and said hello and you know what? Amazingly, (for me) I still love it. 

Often, with hindsight I look back at paintings and think mehhhhh, what was I thinking when I did that but here, nope I still love it. The soft, icy palette, the soft light and the composition still floats my boat, and looking at more detail ….

It’s nice to see a snowy, icy scene without the typical blues; a delicious creamy palette with little pops of lavender just like the melt in the mouth dessert which gave it its title. 

When looking at this painting, I can still feel the frosty, crispness of the air and the little glints of frozen ice and snow on the branches of the tree, I can hear the noise of my footsteps on the icy ground and see my breath and maybe that’s why I love it still. Lavender Parfait has caught the magic of a very special moment and maybe that’s what makes a special painting generally. 

How do you feel when viewing art in a gallery or museum….. what makes a painting ''speak'' to you?  I suppose it depends on what you are looking at, I'm a big fan of the Tudors so my encounter with Jane Seymour at the Kunsthistorischen Museum in Vienna was one of those special moments, I felt like I had met Jane Seymour personally, I turned a corner and boom, ''Hi, it’s me Jane!'' Her little prissy mouth, her obvious love of sumptuous robes and her queenly deportment all spoke to me from Holbein’s work, that painting transported me back to a Tête-à-tête in the times of the Tudors. To be honest, Jane is not my fave ….. I'm an Anne Boleyn fan but unfortunately a meeting with her, isn’t possible! Apart from a slightly damaged coin and the Chequers ring we really have not a contemporary likeness of Anne; there is a sketch by Holbein which is supposed to be Anne but I personally don’t believe that someone as conscious of her image as Anne Boleyn was, would let herself be portrayed as a double-chinned matron in her nightcap. Pity, I would love to have seen Holbein's portrait of Mistress Anne; imperious, confident and remarkable, I bet it would have been amazing!