Description
This is a deeply personal painting. In the late summer of 1995 I left a very difficult 14 year marriage. Days after leaving I wrote in my journal I wanted to live and work in Paris. The next spring I moved to Paris to work for a small software company for six months before helping to establish their San Francisco office. While there, one Saturday I was looking at a Victoria magazine that had been forwarded in my mail from home and saw a candle from a shop called Dyptique. I could see the address in the label on the candle in the magazine – it was a short walk from my apartment. I went that day and bought a rose-scented candle. When I came back to Marin, I was fortunate to be able to buy myself a little house in San Anselmo, where I planted many rosebushes. The candle had since burned to the end and the glass cup made a lovely little vase. I set up this still life one weekend and took several photos. Then I met my real love. We married, endured a bout of cancer together. It wasn’t until facing my grief at not being a mother, while spending a week at a wonderful spa in Mexico where I re-found my loveliness, that this painting came out of me. To Paris and back – to myself.
August – December 2004
