"Free to Love"

"Free to Love," 6x7"  Drawing with thread, based on a Meissen porcelain figurine.



"Free to Love," 5x7" Framed.  Drawing with thread, based on a Meissen porcelain figurine.

The origional Meissen porcelain figurine that inspired my drawing

    So, I flipped the image from the original because I wanted the bird to be in the woman's dominant hand. (assuming she's right handed of course, sorry lefties!)It seemed a little dark otherwise, the woman with a bird, the man waiting to trap both in a cage...? A bit of googling led me to believe that the birdcage was most often used as a symbol of marital fidelity.  Irregardless of the past, I think it is a very rich subject: Commitment could potentially feel like a cage, you are free to do as you please until saying, 'I do,' after-which you can no longer change your mind.  Also, it brings to mind the dilemma of who to love and why- pre-arranged marriage anyone? Even today, we have a long list of priorities in the people we love: beauty, humor, money, chemistry, character, shared politics, hobbies, lifestyle, mental & physical health.  Sometimes we love in spite of those qualities! Why do we fall in love with people who are wrong for us?  Perhaps love itself is a cage that traps us with someone that if we could think straight we would avoid!  This brings me to my most recent quote from Proust, as I have begun the 4th volume, 'Sodom and Gomorrah'

"Like everybody who is not in love, he imagined that one chose the person whom one loved after endless deliberations, and on the strength of various qualities and advantages."  -Proust (SG)

   I'm sorry to say that I have heard of some marriages that were chosen 'on the strength of various qualities and advantages'- the marriages did not last.  It is almost funny to read when written in that way, the narrator is imagining this thinking in his friend Saint-Loup.  We already know that another character fell in love with, and married, 'someone he wasn't even attracted to!'  Love is a funny thing, and therefor of seeming endless potential in art.  I will promise too, that I will post images of some of the love-themed art I made in college.  I just need to photograph it well...
    I think though, that we do not choose any of the people whom we love the most.  My parents, my brother, my family- I adore them.  I might not have met them otherwise, and might not have taken the time to really know them, forgive them their faults, uncover their truest qualities.  I don't necessarily love my mother because of her personality.  Right?  I must, in the end, love her because she is my mother, by coincidence.  (I did hit the jackpot as far as Mom's go though, just say'in)  My point is, I did not choose my family, and yet I love them.  Maybe, my unborn soul knew them and chose them- who's to say?  But, it was not a conscious choice that I am aware of.  Why then, should it be any surprise at all, that the friends and lovers we encounter are not consciously, deliberately, purposefully, chosen either?  Maybe it really is just about the way they smell & if their immune system is compatible with ours? (Oh you know I'll be researching images for that concept soon...)

    Maybe, our hearts are wiser than our heads.  I am in a yoga teacher training program now with Rolf Gates, and sometimes at the end of our practice he will say the following, "Bring your hands, palms together to your third eye (the space between your eyebrows), and experience a mind that has remembered the way.  Now, bring your hands to your heart, and experience a heart that is the way."  Also, even though I've posted it before, my favorite quote from my favorite book: "It is only with the heart one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye." -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.  The image of the bird outside of its cage, choosing to stay with the lovers, calls to my mind more than anything else, exactly that.  It can go anywhere, do anything, and it is choosing to be with two people who are in love. (Two people who I've decided are similar, but not wearing matching outfits- they're a little bit different from each other too!) Above escaping to freedom, hanging out with other birds, eating yummy worms instead of seeds- above doing the logical thing, the bird chooses love.  (oh, if you've read The Little Prince, you'll guess it: The bird has been tamed...)

“…if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world…if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow”

― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince  

       I am pleased to share that if I possibly have any internet fans who don't know me yet, you can see my art in person, in two locations!!!  "Free to Love," and "Lyon, France: Birthplace of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry" (posted here on 1/28)will be on display at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago's show, "What Those Who Teach Can Do," with the reception on March 14th. (I am a HS art teacher...) http://whatteacherscreate.com/Chicago/  
  Also, I received a merit award this month for my submission to the Monthly show at my local art league, woot! http://www.napervilleartleague.com

Currently on display at the Naperville Art League