Welcome Monika!

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's The Beloved


I do not know you well enough, yet, to be sure in choosing a painting to welcome you. I have been on Google to gaze again at Rossetti’s “The Beloved.” My earliest memory of this painting was in elementary school when an art teacher asked us to consider it because Victorian Rossetti had painted the attendants of different races. I attended a very progressive Laboratory School attached to an International University and I went to school with children of all different colors. I would never naturally have even noticed what the art teacher was pointing out. I was much more concerned with the attendants obvious attitudes of varying distraction. The teacher made his point with other paintings of the period and it was an interesting lesson. I still came away intrigued by the painting, for I felt that though the bride is looking on with such serenity, there was something definitely going on with those attendants. This feeling was highlighted for me by their closeness around her and the looks on their faces. I was probably nine.

Since that time I have had many moments to consider “The Beloved” further, in various different lights. One of the marvels of art, in all forms, is that the reader, the viewer, the listener takes from the art what she/he needs. This isn’t always what was at the front of the artists mind, but in real art that offering is always there . . . a mystery.

I came to where I saw Rossetti’s Bride this way . . . a woman on one of the most important days of her life. She is calm and serene and untroubled. I came to where I saw her attendants, her sisters, pulled tight around her in protection and solidarity. Whatever it is they are worried about, the Bride is not having to worry about it, she is free to consider the mystery she is about to embark upon. She knows she is safe, she is surrounded by sisters. Do they worry that the bridgegroom will be good enough for their friend? Will he care for her enough? Or is it, more universally, ‘the world’ that she is about to enter that they fear for her? Look at the face of the young one who holds the flowers at the bottom and leans her head against the Bride. I don’t know. I do know that this is the feeling this painting came to bring me.

And so . . . even though to put one of my paintings up against a Rossetti makes me laugh a little (Saint Irony, there in the shadows, he is laughing a lot), I offer you this in Welcome. In my painting you cannot see the other women, but you know they are there. This is the Amazon Warrior I incarnated for Heather when Darryl became ill again. Heather’s beloved is threatened, and like Rossetti’s attendants, sisters have risen up from all corners of Lemuria immediately to stand in a tight circle around her. The Amazon Queen is here to fight that which comes in threat. You can see in her face, her reaction to that which threatens her friend. In my painting you don’t see the of the legions who follow her, they are the mystery in the sunsplit . . . but I think the viewer knows they are there.

I liked your introduction and ideas. “There is a sense of submerged longing, for something bright like gold to come up. The knowledge that you are nowhere or nothing, and can easily twist into you are somewhere and everything.” This is so true. I have walked most of my life knowing that nowhere or nothing WOULD twist into somewhere and everything at any moment, knowing that if I stood with my fingers in the water and waited, like the bright salmon of knowledge, the gold would come up. I’ve spent a lot of time trailing my fingers in the water. “She’s fey,” my boyfriend used to say, quoting Yeats, “there’s a mystery on her.” My questing, however, is often not wary, my asking not always cautious. You will see that in my Amazon’s face as well.

Be welcome Monika. I look forward to your seeking, your discoveries, your words of weaving.