“Skylark”
Pencil, pastel, and watercolor
September 2020
This study for a larger,planned painting (which I will probably not do; the “study” says everything I needed) will be a gift to my Sewanee pal, Molly Piette Justice. I didn’t, actually, know her at all well from that time…..beyond a vague recollection of her being very pretty and quite popular in 1980 or so. We met up, so to speak, again, when, via Facebook, she bought a painting from this past year. We’ve talked on the telephone. She’s awfully nice (and FUNNY, too, which is rare)….so, this small painting will be a bit of lagniappe for her when I mail off the one she bought. The title is, of course, taken from Shelley…….
“….We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
Yet if we could scorn
Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,
I know not how thy joy we ever should come near…..”