Edgar Degas, and me who would of thought
such a thing.
If you're lucky and have someone who
loves you they will know when you're in an impossible situation and they'll help
you through. My wife said to me early in the fall of 1995,”why don't you paint
some pictures we could put in the living room?” A blessing in disguise.
Having just received a book on Edgar Degas
from Regina, and knowing that would be something my wife would like, as opposed
to, say, a Jackson Pollack, I began my studies with "Uncle Edgar",
whom I'd always relegated to the pastel workers, actually lumping him below the
users
of acrylics and watercolors. I learned a
lot from "Uncle Edgar", and as a matter of fact came to see what
Gauguin saw (see Three Girls bathing 1875).
I rendered three efforts from Edgar's
work, the first, below.
Woman
Trying on Hat in a Mirror (10/29/95)
The second Degas was of a woman trying on
hats while seated at a table. On the table are five hats, some on the table,
some on stands. Ribbons and flowers and bows decorate the hats, making them of
all colors. The woman is studying a hat as if she'll eat it, while the
background is darkly brushed
light, just a feeling of walls. Uncle
Edgar uses colors, darks versus light, and greens, blues with black outlines.
Wonderful stuff to learn, see, and do. I'd come to like Uncle Edgar by about
now.
Woman,
seated with Hats (11/10/95)
The final study from Edgar was of Mary
Cassatt standing in front of a large floor length mirror. Behind the mirror is
a hat shop worker who is holding additional hats to be tried on. Again, the
colors in this picture are very different from anything I've tried before.
Orange, indeed, is a hard color to be the main focus of a picture other than a
landscape.
