I've Gotta Have Art

I know I wrote that I've been living without all my things and that it was really the little things that mattered, but truth be told, I DO need some art in my life.   

While the place I'm staying is surrounded outside by natural beauty (I will show you one day, but today it's overcast and not the prettiest views), inside I felt I had to change the wall decor.  Though prettily decorated it didn't speak to me so I made a few small changes so the art would better suit me during this period.

The existing painting in my nicely appointed room is of Rockport, Massachusetts where my friend spent many a vacation. Below it, I hung my newest Wallace Nutting.  Unlike my other Wallace Nuttings, it is not a hand-colored photograph.  Found in a New York thrift store, it appears to be a very ethereal and dreamy watercolor, and yet it has his copyright mark on it, so I'm not sure.  I only know that when I came across it — in a box of small framed things in the Council Thrift Shop on East 84th Street — I was ecstatic.  


Together these two pieces (hers and mine) form an idyllic scene that greets me first thing when I sit up from sleep in the morning and makes me smile.

Then I head to the dresser and facing me I now see this brightly painted canvas of a lush garden scene and beside it a little Indonesian statue of a man carrying in a cup of tea.  For the bulk of my married life, my husband brought me my cup of coffee every morning, allowing me to awaken while still in bed.  It was a lovely gift each day but he stopped this ritual a year or two ago.  

He never said why; I never asked; we never discussed it.  When I see this little guy I can imagine this is my morning drink.

And the final adornment in my room is this colorful frame in which I put three "business cards" from one artist, plus one image of a flower, Bells of Ireland, I cut from a calendar by the artist Neil Seth Levine. [If you go to his site, please check out one of my favorites, Banksia, under Images, page 3.] 









Next to this collage, stands my sweet Chinese boy strumming his lute and this vignette is the last thing I see when I turn out the light every night.






Interesting that I have two statuettes of foreign men guarding my boudoir...