"Soft Upon" came from the magical place where the Muses send these things out. One day this April I suddenly felt interested in painting a Mother and Child painting. My vision of the painting revealed itself with specific detail: a young mother with a naked infant standing in a pool of cool light, draped in delicate, translucent fabric, with a wall and shadows in the background.
Mother and Child paintings may be on my mind because Francesca and I take care of my ailing mother. Or maybe the image of a mother with her daughter interested me after spending months painting the male members of a family. Or perhaps I just wanted to join the conversation as old as art by creating my own Mother with Child painting. Or maybe the painting just wanted to be conceived and I got picked to paint it.
Usually I gather material and choose from it the image or images I want to use to create a painting. This time, with a vision so strong in my mind, the painting told me the elements I needed. Specific ideas came to mind for the model, the clothes, and the setting.
The Model
Robyn instantly jumped to mind as the model. Robyn is one of the best models I've gotten to work with, and she recently had a daughter, Finnoula, who was only a few months old.
Robyn regularly poses for life-drawing sessions, and teaches other models how to model. She has great poise, and a knack for finding interesting, natural poses. Once I explained the project to her, Robyn was excited about it.
The Clothes
Since this was a new way of working for me, I just had to trust the Muse to see what would happen. Of course there was some ad-libbing along the way. Prior to the first sitting, I realized that neither Robyn nor I had the clothing I wanted.
My real life Muse, Francesca, suggested we wander around town, open to possibilities. The first store we walked into, a women's boutique that Francesca likes, had a row of scarves. While I was looking through them, the owner asked what I was looking for. I told her about the painting I had in mind, and, pointing at one of the scarves, she said, "You can have that one. It's flawed." I wasn't sure, but once I saw it on Robyn, there was no question. It was perfect!
The Setting
Robyn and I decided the best place to start would be her house. I had never seen it, but from Robyn's description, it sounded fine. Her living room, a large open room in a 1930's frame house, had lots of large windows and faced North for the best light. The walls were painted in soft pastels of green and pink. Colorful scarves and pieces of fabric hung around the room. Light from outside created wonderful shadows and reflections.
Next to Robyn's staircase, we found a place where the light shone softly, yet produced fascinating shapes. A bright red scarf hung from the bannister. The staircase presented an unexpected but welcome break in the wall behind Robyn that helped the composition. The setting fit my vision beautifully.
The Sitting
While I've worked with children many times, I had never tried to gather material to paint an infant. My first impression: infants move - a lot. I kind of knew this from being around my own kids, but other than a few sketches of them right after they were born, I'd never tried to put together enough material to create a formal painting of a baby.
Robyn and Finnoula have such a loving relationship, I decided to simply follow them around hoping to see what happened. I sketched and took photos. As the modeling session progressed, I became increasingly comfortable guiding Robyn and Finnoula to create my original vision.
Robyn of course stayed mindful of finding poses that nearly always exceeded my expectations. She also found ways of arranging the scarf that absolutely caught what I had envisioned. The trick became keeping it in place for more than a few seconds before it or Finnoula changed drastically. Imagination and memory become great allies in this struggle.
My hope was that we could transcend the difficulties of getting everybody and everything in the right place, and focus on the love Robyn feels for her daughter.
The result comes very close to what I was looking for. I don't think I could get any closer to my original goal.
An Ancient Conversation
Of course the theme is as old as art. A Mother and Child painting necessarily taps into a conversation that's been going on for thousands of years. My challenge was to add something meaningful to this body of work. I'm humbled to participate in such a conversation.
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