Longing Sealed with a Feather

Original size: 98/49cm
​A woman is reading a letter written with a feather pen. Butterflies float about her, and with them, words, longing, thoughts and questions. This is one of the collages that I took apart again and again. I spent many hours with it on the worktable like a puzzle awaiting assembly. Surprise and a feeling of magic came over me when I finally realized the symbolism of all the figures.
The woman in blue is based on a painting of Johannes Vermeer. Most of Vermeer’s paintings depict a figure in a house (always the same house) by a window. He reveals the figure in a private moment.  “Woman in Blue Reading a Letter” (1663), also shows a private moment.
In the painting the woman in blue stands alone in a room by a window. I chose to place her in a liminal place, neither inside nor the outside, in a place between her room or chamber and the patio.

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