“Orlando” (A Winter’s Romance)
12″ x 14″
pastel, pencil, and watercolor
2017
While growing up, I always loved these days just after Christmas….when the ritual bustle, visiting relatives, and attendant fuss died down. Then, I could retreat into my bedroom with my presents….. to listen my new recording of the Grieg Concerto in A Minor, re-arrange my bookshelf to accommodate my NEW ENTIRE boxed set of “Lord of the Rings”, read my new & very-own copy of the newly-published, Collected poems of WB Yeats….make a cup of Earl Grey tea (Which I got for Christmas, but what 15 year old boy in East Tennessee requests Twinings tea for Christmas?), and generally lose myself in my fantasies? I was blessed, I know, with remarkably supportive and encouraging parents, quite in despite of my being as weird as a box of birds.
This painting was taken, so to speak, from a photograph I shot on Boxing Day of 2018. I didn’t “arrange” the still-life……everything there was sitting just as it was while I’d unwrapped the presents……the new edition of “Orlando”, the faux-bijoux napkin rings from my French mother-in-law, the sparkling ornament blown by a glass-making pal, The silver&ivory serving utensils (another French gift), etcetera.
The arrangement suited my sense of that post-christmas, winter, snowed-in magic. It still does. The ONLY song for it is this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hd56Ck3C5Go