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Je t’aime Dior
80 x 100cm
31,5” x 39,4”
acrylics on canvas
I love a good perfume. Ever since my teenage days I have had a penchant for the older chypre formulations. For many years Miss Balmain (1967) was my favorite fragrance, only interspersed with other scents to escape olfactory fatigue. ( The well known effect that your nose gets used to a scent when it’s always around)
At that time I didn’t know it was the special group of the chypres, but at some time it did start to cross my mind that whenever I particularly like a fragrance and read up it’s notes it turns out to be a chypre.
My chypre perfumes:
Pierre Balmain: Miss Balmain, Jolie Madame
Christian Dior: Miss Dior, Diorissimo
Chanel: Chanel no 19
Hermès: 24 Fauburg
Houbigant: Aperçu
Sisley: Soir de Lune
And somewhere in time I got a new bottle of Miss Balmain, and all of a sudden I didn’t like it anymore. Now it does happen that our sense of smell alters, but I think it was reformulated. They do that you know… They reformulate perfumes (and do not tell anybody about it) and it is never an improvement.
Now one of the basic ingredients of a chypre is oak-moss. And because some very few people tend to be a bit allergic to it it’s use is now severely restricted and all chypres ahve been reformulated (and maybe cheapened by exchanging the original ingredients for synthetics?)
Anyway, perfumes today are not what they used to be.
In comes the ”Vintage Perfume” and many searches on E-Bay… And while researching what really is the original formula, I came across many vintage advertisements, which I love, painted with a fast brush and beautiful colors! These were the days when models weren’t photographed, but send to artists who made drawings of them! The very best of these was Rene Gruau. I remember advertisements drawn by him from when I was a very small girl, and was hugely impressed by them.
I had to pay my homage. So I made these rather big paintings based on vintage ads and a famous vogue cover.
As I got more and more into vintage perfumes, I got fascinated by them, the advertisements, the mysterious worlds they invoke, the images in my mind of women wearing them… I decided I wanted to make my own advertisements, they are all meant to be from the fifties or forties.
Just wait for my next post!
I am now actually collecting these old perfumes, and wouldn’t it be fun to have an exhibition with the perfumes exhibited next to the paintings and small glass petrie dishes with a bit of chamois leather from which one could actually smell and experience these beautiful original perfumes?
I am looking for a gallery, or maybe a high end fashion shop!
This was sóóóó funny!
Due to the drought there isn’t that much grass in the meadow. Not that you would notice it by the Tarq’s condition which is extremely good, as per usual. (if not positively American Tourist size). But here was count Moritzo, defenitely in need for a snack, and who to our surprise turned out to be the most gymnastic, most circus-level athletic athlete in the herd.
Count Moritzo wanted the unreachable grass on the other side of the electric fence. So right in front of our eyes he stuck his right front foot out, sank down on his left knee, twisted his head and neck, and started eating away!
And this must be a long practiced habit because ever so easily he stood up, walked two steps and did it again!
I had to paint this!
Even if I had to leave my commission to work on it! (Don’t tell anyone!)
It’s a bigger canvas too: 27.6 by 27.6 inches
Count Moritzo needs a snack
Oil on canvas
27.6” x27.6”
There is something about Pom, she is so very inspiring! And as it was the birthday of little I, I made this princess portrait of Pom.
It is a small oval canvas, 7” by 4” I think…
A detail of the roof of the Pacific Asia Museum, the plan is for a kind of mosaic of small panels painted with details of Pasadena which struck me as I roamed about.
Roof Detail
6” x 6”
Acrylic on painters board
I have spend three days in succession running around Pasadena. Although, stumbling around in the debilitating heat would be a better description.
Here is another sketch of one of the small towers of the Pasadena Town Hall.
And I have also been to the Pacific Asia Museum.
This is a nice museum, and the building alone is worth while going there.
Tomorrows painting will be a detail of the roof!
And last Saturday the Q dropped me off at the Huntington. This is very expensive, but very worthwhile, lots of great art, different pavillions with exhibits, and beautiful gardens!
In the chinese garden the Lotuses were in bloom.
And I have been to a good art-shop, Blick, in Pasadena, and brought a starter set acrylic paint, and some small painters boards. I am now making a small painting of some Pasadena detail which cought my fancy every day.
While I was making the sketch of the urn at the Pasadena Town Hall, I saw this cute pidgeon!
Pasadena Pidgeon
Acrylic on painters board
6” x 6”
I have done something really good! I have thrown out my tv!
I did it three weeks ago, and I haven’t missed it a second!
Which is partly explained by my internet addiction but never mind. My huge big box of a tv is gone, and so have the 200+ videos.
I hate tv-programming, and commercials, but I did like my videos. But still, I feel immensely relieved 
And so I have also been cleaning up my stash of panels, frames and miscellaneous… And I found a couple of paintings I had (almost) forgotten.
Once upon a time there was an exhibition in the National Gallery in London, and I went there, it was about Spanish still lives and they almost all have a black background. I loved it! I like black… So I started to do Spanish still lives, and then I did some other paintings with a black background.
Now bear with me; those black oil paintings are hell to photograph and I didn’t manage it perfectly.
Small white Pegasus
Oil on Panel
5,5” x 7,5”
Just a small drawing for the cover for the Easter weekend. I will not attend, I will be in Dallas!
Just back from the lovely Sidesaddle weekend, I have enrolled for the ”Ascention-Weekend”. Not that we plan to ascend to heaven, although that is always a possibillity when dashing through the forests at ”Ludicrous-Speed” with the Tarq…
No, Ascention day means an extra long weekend in the Netherlands, with extra holidays so this is the very best ponycamp of the year, as it starts on wednesday!
So I made this cartoon for the booklet.
It says ”Ascention Weekend” ”Yes! We are going!” And the Tarq says: ”But I am still not going into the trailer”…
This little equine portrait is a cute little filly which is being trained by my friend S. She came as a very scared little thing, grown up in the wild. She is the offspring of a mare from a free-roaming group of Exmoor ponies, and a naughty spanish stallion who escaped his comfortable lodgings to have a night of hanky-panky with the wild ladies. Who consequently gave birth to a pack of cruzados, all unwanted because the aim was to keep the Exmoors as a pure herd.
So little Kyra arrived as a shivering bundle of nerves, and my friend S has been working with, and caring for the little lady for about six months now. By now Kyra has about doubled in size, her somewhat crooked legs have become straight, and she has become a very sweet friendly little horse, enjoying working with S. and looking forward to every session, and looking at the world with open curiosity.
I was completely taken with her.
My friend S also likes photography and she had one photo which struck me in it’s monumental simplicity. She send it to me. I usually don’t work from photo’s other than using them for details, information. The danger with really working from a photo is that you get a very static painting. You can usually see at first glance when an artist has copied a photo. There is something languid and boring and static about such paintings.
Yet when one has to make a portrait of a horse on another continent, or one which has died, one has no choice. If I have to use photo’s and can’t meet the horse in person, I prefer to get a lot of photos. That way I can have a more complete image in my mind of the horse and it’s personality.
I think the major problem is that if you have such a clear, static, two-dimensional image in front of you, you tend to concentrate far too much on that easy image.
I have noticed paintings which follow a photo so slavishly that silly things are copied too, like a hoof dangling at a weird angle. Now the human mind works thus: if it is a Photo, your brain doesn’t really register a detail which is artistically a bad detail. But as soon as that image is transferred to a drawing or painting it becomes immediately apparent. So you should weed out those things which will look wrong in a piece of art. You should also avoid looking too much at the photo, but instead concentrate more on your painting.
So as I looked at that photo I kept seeing more details, more interesting combinations between blacks, greys and browns. I thought it would be an interesting study, use the one photo, try not to get bogged down with details, and explore those subtle colours.
Now of course I also know Kyra very well, but I really wanted this to be an excercise in using only one photo, and keep it fresh.
So what do you think?
This is also Diary painting 9/10 December. And to show you a bit of my painting process I show you the portrait half-finished too.
The photo of Kyra
Kyra half finished
Kyra
9/10 december 2010
9” × 9” oil on canvas
Oil on Canvas 9” ×9”
This from a series of designs I made which are meant for modern interiors, as a quiet but colourful touch. Somebody asked me for some designs, and at first I thought it a stupid commission, but I really got to enjoy myself and I made a lot for myself! I am going to do a few as diary paintings.
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