"MASTER OF THE PORTRAIT"

I'm back! Please forgive me for taking this long. Sometimes the thoughts and words just don't come. It's been 4 1/2 weeks since my surgery and my sling is off and I am healing. Shoulder surgery takes a long time to heal and improve, and with physical therapy starting this week (Thursday), I will do more healing and improving. My plan is to be a very good patient with my exercises. After all, it's my choice to have only 75% use of my shoulder with some continued pain, forever. Or follow the PT exercises and improve and continue to live a healthy, full life. I choose option  2! Enough of that.

My favorite TV show did it again. Who doesn't like Monty Python? No one doesn't like Monty Python. That is of course a double negative, which equals a positive. John Cleese is that crazy Englishman with the bazaar sense of humor. CBS Sunday Morning did a segment recently on John Cleese, and it was fabulous. He is co-founder of Monty Python. One of his movies, A Fish Called Wanda, is a favorite of mine.

But the segment that stood out for me was on the artist John Singer Sargent. He was known as Master of the Portrait. In college I took Art History and remember it was a huge book, by Jansson I think. It must have been $100.  and that was a lot of money back then. The sad thing is I don't ever remember reading about him. Perhaps that's why I was so thrilled to watch this program. He was born in the mid 1850's, to American parents, in Florence, Italy. He spent his entire childhood growing up in Europe and spoke 5 languages. If I ever get back to New York, I hope to see his paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The paintings they showed were exquisite - vibrant colors, beautiful folds in the fabric on his subjects, the faces! Simply put, his paintings looked like photos they were so gorgeous.

One story they high-lighted was on his painting called Madam X. In 1884 he painted a woman in an evening gown, with one shoulder strap that draped off her shoulder. Very scandalous in 1884, even for Paris. It's hard to imagine Paris, France being offended by a provocative pose. He accentuated her sensuality by letting her evening gown strap fall off of her shoulder. He did however change the painting by putting her strap back on her shoulder.

John Singer Sargent became black-listed for some time. But thank goodness he did not let society dictate what he could and could not paint. Be yourself, who else is better qualified?

Thank you, good night and God Bless!   Aleta

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." Ralph Waldo Emerson,  19th century American writer, theologian and poet