This is another painting of my muse, Linda Nicole, now a teenager. I got the idea from a TV program I saw on
TVE about thanksgiving which featured the Madrid School of Realism. Talk about a humbling experience! Five young
guys and one girl, all of whom could paint so beautifully that I nearly gave up the hobby in favor of, say, knitting.
One of the guys painted the same elderly male model from a bunch of different perspectives. All were great, but one--in
which it appeared he was looking down on his subject who was standing in the street below--was so striking that I resolved
not to give up painting until I had at least tried something similar. So I photographed Linda Nicole from approximately
the same perspective and worked from there.
My thought was that she
had been lying in the grass reading a storybook when she was distracted by a noise or a movement above her, perhaps in a tree.
When she got up to investigate, she saw something--a squirrel, a bird, maybe even an iguana--high up in the branches. So,
the viewer is looking down on her as she peers up into the branches, the book--momentarily forgotten--laying open in the grass
behind her.
