It's been a long time coming. I stumbled up on my subject matter in 1986, a pretty good year in my life, all things considered. I was re-reading a book of prose essays by Federico Garcia Lorca in translation and found myself galvanized by his first short piece, a funeral elegy for a painter named Maria Blanchard. I couldn't find much more about her, just an anecdote in a biography of Diego Rivera, whom she loved and with whom she shared a studio in Paris.
I tried to find her art. The head librarian at the college where I taught, Bob Schirmer, managed to find a book on her at a small college in Connecticut and get a photocopy sent to me. I was so excited to get the package, only to open it and see that in the black and white photocopies of the day, Blanchard's paintings looked like Rorschach tests.
In 2007 trip to Spain, Paul spied her name as we entered the Reina Sofia Museum, and I practically RAN up the stairs to see her huge, "Woman with a Fan." In the gift shop, I found a 10x14 inch, 740 page book of her complete catalogue at the top. I bought it and cradled it on my lap the whole plane ride home.
My good friend the writer Tom Barlow suggested a blog where I link the art that I've written about, and this series will do that. Later this fall, I hope to also post a few works that are not online. (I will be showing those for the first time at the Lit Youngstown Fall Literary Festival in October.)
If you don't have a copy of the book and would like to purchase one, my website tells you how to do that: dianekendig.com
And the publisher, Shanti Arts, has a nice page of info on the book here
See my second blog with links to Blanchard's artwork here.
See my third blog about Maria herself here
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