The female figure has been the archetype for grace in form.
Sitting on south Florida beaches, one does not often find a female that inspires grace in paintings. I’m not being harsh on the women at the beach: I’m delighted we are no longer trapped indoors and out of sight by body fat. We are free to have lumps of flesh pouring out of our bathing suits: we swim and bob as we please. I include myself in this list. However, last week, that one, unique and breathtaking vision of a young woman glided down the beach through the seaweed walk. Her body must have been no more than about 19 or 20 years.
She wore a thong bikini. On her body, she might as well been nude. After my quick snap shot photograph, I had enough information for a body study but not enough for an anatomy painting.
Always, always, always on my mind is how to honor her without making her look like a cheap porno queen. Instead of focusing on her youthful flesh, what emerged was her stance. Her purposed glide with focus on the long seaweed trail. She was a vase. She was a sculpture. She was youthful, female strength and beauty. Her pride in form and easy conformation were overriding energies that radiated like the droplet of the sun in star shape.
The crow and brown pelican crop close to our beach shore line. The bird in the painting is a combination of both. In visionary work, two different things can be combined to mean the same thing. In this case, it’s the crow’s intelligence and the pelican’s primordial lines. Together they augment this woman’s stance as she follows their lead.
Kitty Wallis archival sanded paper is the base of this pastel painting. It’s grit kept me from setting up the piece with an underdrawing in charcoal. I went straight into it with Nupastel hard sticks, broken into smaller pieces to fill in color and rhythm. As soon as I pulled out the soft blue pastels for the sky and water, I was in heaven. The grit catches the pastel color and holds it up to view. The tiny layers of built up pastel are so luscious and provide depth of texture.
Though the piece has an unfinished quality, it is complete. The stance was the vision to capture. She was a vase, a sea vase that emerged from the seaweed.