I understand tasks, music is a task, incorporating a great many things, but over all they fall under three main ideas…Think, Breath, Sing. Visual art is very similar to music because of three main ideas as well…Heart, Imagination, Paint. You must have a Heart, one with drive to create a work. Imagination to build color, to also trust a beautiful line and to follow it to create a form in the odalisque, and what is a painting without the paint?! I took a class at emerson college, something along the lines of art history and since taking the course I have fallen in love with art, specifically, Frank Weston Benson’s Eleanor, 1907. Oil on canvas, part of The Hayden Collection.
Eleanor is Benson’s daughter outdoors at their summer home, in Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, in Maine. This was a time of “Anne of Green Gables” and lace curtains. This painting is gorgeous, the colors, the stippling of flowers, and the soft lines of her face make the painting jump off the wall, unfortunately it wont walk its way to my apartment and make its self at home. Because Benson was an impressionist, this painting incorporates all of the lessons from our class. Eleanor is almost in the form of odalisque, with hat in hand, looking out into the bay for the island, weather looking to me like late June. The use of color and its opposites aren’t noticeable until you look at the piece up close. I appreciate his use of what he knows, that is what makes a good artist, one that paints what he knows…psychologically more emotion will go into the work engulfing more heart and care into each line, thus making the piece speak to more than just a small minority. I love Benson’s Eleanor, and I hope you will see it in person, be sure to look at her face in comparison to the foliage lines, they are marvelous. It currently lives at the museum of fine arts in boston.
