Copyright © 2025 Corinne Geertsen. All Rights reserved.
What’s New
SAINT VALENTINE
Saint Valentine’s bird companion would, of course, be exquisite. While I was building this picture, I walked into a garden center looking for a new tree and BAM! There was the white peacock. I returned with my good camera and followed him around for an afternoon, taking hundreds of photos.
Saint Valentine and the peacock have bound themselves with a single satin ribbon and a locket. I wrote the word “Devotion” on a note card and kept it beside me while I worked. The curtains curve around the peacock and young man to frame them and seclude them.
Tokens of their fondness for each other are strewn on the table. Shared snacks, love letters, a key with a filigree heart on the end. The porcelain heart box with the gold peacock on the lid is from 1761. It’s in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Mazarine Blue” was often used by The Chelsea Porcelain Factory as a ground color at the time. The other objects are from Dutch Still Life paintings in the early 1600’s. For example, the cherries are from “Basket of Flowers”, 1622 by Balthasar van der Ast.
A MORE RATIONAL DAY THAN THE LAST
Things are looking up. The wind is in your hair. You’ve hitched a ride on a leviathan, off to somewhere delightful and completely unknown. You lean into the wind.
The cloud is the perfect cloud, the essence of cloud. Fortunately, I had my camera in my hands when I looked up and saw it. I photographed it and it was gone in a breath. It has mystery. It has gravitas. It has enough presence to hold its own, even in a picture with a whale.
I’ve never seen a blue whale. I’ve never seen a FLYING blue whale. I called this one up from my imagination, but it took a lot of thinking.
Bon voyage.
HIGH TEA
Chaos, tumult, havoc. Bighorn sheep have done a number on this room. And there goes the cake….
The room and its panels are a riff on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exquisite turquoise room, the Boiserie from the Palais Paar (constructed in Vienna 1765-72).
The teapot is really yellow and came down through my husband’s family. The teacup – in our family it’s the most prized teacup, because of its absolutely perfect fracture. I photographed the cracks on stucco buildings. We stop abruptly for good cracks.
The hostess is clutching her guest, trying to remain serene. We can see in the rabbit’s eye that he may not be a willing partygoer.
While I was working on this picture, I was struck by how Bighorn sheep have a decadent Rococo beauty all their own. They can jump fifteen feet, more if they spring off a sofa.
“She Subscribed to a Bird-Brained Manner of Thinking” is about making decisions. This Civil War era woman is thinking, “Should I, shouldn’t I? Is it true? Is this right? Is that wrong?”
Her gaze is unbroken. She’s clearly underwater. Great egrets are flying in, offering her Magic 8 Ball-style solutions. Often we make decisions based on what we’re told and taught, not from our true hearts. Perhaps we haven’t been taught to think.
The fish’s idea is…well, fishy. Let’s hope she goes with her heart. Let’s hope she thinks for herself.
December 2024 issue.
WILD ABOUT YOU
I made “Wild About You” in the month before a wedding in the family. Here, the newlyweds invite a few friends to celebrate on their honeymoon cruise. Also chocolate.
THERE GOETH THE NEIGHBORHOOD
We’re familiar with the Adam and Eve story. Here’s their arrival, as seen by the Garden dwellers. Eden may never be the same. The animals have their doubts.
I made the dome of the flying saucer from a photo I took of the Marble Church in Copenhagen when I lived there. Best Souvenir ever!
I made some of the animals from my own photos. Others are from Johann Peter Wenzel’s 1800-1829 painting “Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden” and from Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s 1600-1692 painting “Landscape with Exotic Animals”.
Adam and Eve are from Adriaen van der Werff’s 1717 painting “God hold Adam and Eve Responsible”.
The Background is a reimagined version of Fragonard’s “Le Rocher” 1780.
AM I A REAL BEAR?
A black bear is pondering an existential question: Am I a real bear? He’s working on a puzzle of a real bear. Maybe a good look in the mirror will help. He’s clearly deep in thought.
Two men are trying to subvert the bear’s autonomy. One slips him a coin. (The hand and coin are after “The Tribute Money”, painted by Titian in 1516.) They’re enticing him with a scooter, drum, red ball and a fancy cravat. The red curtain is the boundary of their world.
Beyond the curtain is the wilderness. The owl waits. The squirrel implores. The bear has a forest seedling in his lap, the only forest available to him. (I photographed the giant sequoia seedling in 2016.)
I dreamt the bear and made him up. His front paws and rear claws are from bears I’ve photographed.
The men are after the painting “René-Charles Dassy and His Brother Jean-Baptiste-Claude-Amédé Dassy” by Hippolyte Jean Flandrin. They show off the height of fashion in1850. And they want a bear.
Meanwhile, the bear ponders.
WALKIES
If dogs had mythology, this would be their goddess – the woman with the leash and the ball. I wrote down the word “Glorious” and kept it near while I worked.
The goddess figure is a Diana. A huntress is what dogs are looking for in a goddess.
This work follows stylized French court portraits of the 18th century. The Goddess is from a Portrait of Madame Bonnier de la Mosson as Diana by Nattier.
Keep your eye on the ball.
HIS RADIANCE
Centaurs, across the broad history of art are wild, rapacious, and violent. With the exception of a few, they represent man’s bestial nature.
We can only aspire to this centaur’s dazzle, self-possession, grace, weird athleticism, and sartorial knack.
He’s mythology. He’s civilization. He pedals all he is across a tightrope on a unicycle, while flinging a yoyo. He may be saying something about the fragile underpinnings of our civilization.
The man hails from “Portrait of a Young Man” by Bronzino, painted in the 1530’s.
The horse portion of the centaur is from “Whistlejacket” by George Stubbs,1762. I loved horses. I learned to draw by extensively and repetitively drawing from Stubb’s horses and dogs. The fabric wrapped around the horse is from “Portrait of Francisco Hurtado de Mendoza”, anonymous, 1601, Rijksmuseum.
MYTHOLOGY GONE AWRY
In mythology paintings from the Renaissance forward, major and minor deities play out well known scripts. Here, mythology goes off the rails. Hesperus gets abducted by a flying saucer.
The ship (from “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by Pieter Bruegel the Elder) flies a pirate flag.
Jean-Marc Nattier’s Venus, masquerading as Diana and wearing Hermes’ winged sandals, has been unhorsed and has lost her ice cream cone.
The deities are beset by anachronisms. Achilles strides out an open porthole in Pegasus wearing high heels. Somehow a dinosaur has made an appearance.
Relative scale is broken. Achilles is really, really small.
Clearly, this train wreck of mayhem never made the known pantheon of myth.
