Woman with a Pearl

The vintage black lace slip in this portrait came to me from a family member who had worn it in the 1940s. I felt I had to paint it. But I didn’t expect the slip would carry me into the realm of the French painter Corot or back as far as Leonardo da Vinci. Eventually, I decided to have the model assume the pose of the seated Mona Lisa. The pearl around her neck refers indirectly to Corot’s painting Woman with a Pearl, another seated figure also posed like the Mona Lisa. From Florence to Paris to Taos, NM, this fantasy portrait has a long ancestry.

46x32 framed pastel