Kiki

This painting of mine is based on the Man Ray photo of Kiki de Montparnasse, Parisian muse, model and general gal about town. She helped define the liberated culture of Paris in the 20's.

A fixture of Montparnasse's social scene, Kiki was a popular artists' model posing for Soutine, Foujita, Francis Picabia, Jean Cocteau and Alexander Calder to name a few. She was the companion of Man Ray who created many well-known images of her. (think "cello")

On my other blog, The Clever Pup, I refer to the book Kiki's Paris, Artists and Lovers 1900-1930 as my "Desert Island" book. The book is a bible; a veritable encylopedia of who was active in Montparnasse in the 20's. Picasso, the Steins, Matisse, Modigliani and Hemingway were all within Kiki's orbit. Published in 1989, biographers Billy Klüver and Julie Martin called Kiki "one of the century's first truly independent women."

In my rendition of Kiki I simplied the details and of course added some colours. I could imagine her in burgundies and golds. I corrected her wardrobe malfunction.

This is one of the images I'm including on my note cards.

My New Adventure

I've bit the bullet, so to speak and I'm in the midst of opening my own Etsy shop. The shop itself is called The Plum Plum, but I made a beginner's mistake. Although I thought long and hard about the name I was going to use and researched it up and down and top to bottom, I signed into Etsy using hazelsmith62 thinking "surely this isn't the time for my brilliant name". hazelsmith62 is my Etsy URL. Depressing.

Hopefully I can funnel a lot of people through my blog site and we can just pretend that indeed I am The Plum Plum.

I'll be selling printed cards of my acrylic paintings and some post cards derived from vintage family photographs. Maybe a couple of tote bags. And when time allows maybe some vintage paper goods.

I'm pretty excited about The Plum Plum.

I'm not open yet, but I'll let you know.

Hazel