Lucas as a Fop
2011, Oil on Canvas, 44 x 96”
Look upward where the white gull screams, What does it see that we do not see? Is that a star? or the lamp that gleams On some outward voyaging argosy,– Ah! can it be We have lived our lives in a land of dreams! How sad it seems.-Oscar Wilde, Her Voice
Lura: Art for Art’s Sake
2012, Oil on Canvas, 48 x 36″
Jane Eyre: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”
2017, Oil on Panel, 16 x 20″
I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you.
-Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Come into the Garden, Maud
2013, oil on panel, 20 x 16”
Come into the garden, Maud,
For the black bat, night, has flown,
Come into the garden, Maud,
I am here at the gate alone;
And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad,
And the musk of the rose is blown.
For a breeze of morning moves,
And the planet of Love is on high,
Beginning to faint in the light that she loves
In a bed of daffodil sky,
To faint in the light of the sun she loves,
To faint in his light, and to die.
-Tennyson, Maud: A Monodrama
Naomi: Born to Strange Sights
2014, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”
If thou be’st born to strange sights,
Things invisible to see…
-John Donne, Song: Go and catch a falling star
An Artful Place
2014, Oil on Canvas, 36 x 48”
The taxi drew up at a wonderful shop—the sort of shop I would never dare to walk through without a reason. We went in by way of the glove and stocking department, but there were things from other departments just dotted about; bottles of scent and a little glass tree with cherries on it and a piece of white branched coral on a sea-green chiffon scarf. Oh, it was an artful place—it must make people who have money want to spend it madly!
The pale grey carpets were as springy as moss and the air was scented; it smelled a bit like bluebells but richer, deeper.
“What does it smell of, exactly?” I said. And Rose said:
“Heaven.”
-Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Cellist
2013, charcoal on arches, 44.5 x 80”
‘T is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sings but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
-Amy Lowell, Listening
Emily Tennyson
2014, oil on panel, 16 x 20”
O somewhere, meek, unconscious dove
That sittest ranging golden hair;
And glad to find thyself so fair,
Poor child, that waitest for thy love!
For now her father’s chimney glows
In expectation of a guest;
And thinking “this will please him best,”
She takes a riband or a rose;
For he will see them on to-night;
And with the thought her colour burns;
And, having left the glass, she turns
Once more to set a ringlet right;
And, even when she turn’d, the curse
Had fallen, and her future Lord
Was drown’d in passing thro’ the ford,
Or kill’d in falling from his horse.
-Tennyson, In Memoriam
Forrest Fop II
2013, oil on canvas, 36 x 48”
Ay! though the gorgèd asp of passion feed
On my boy’s heart, yet have I burst the bars,
Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the stars!
-Oscar Wilde, Apologia
Orlando: Eyes like Drenched Violets
2010, oil on panel, 9 x 12”
Directly we glance at Orlando standing by the window, we must admit that he had eyes like drenched violets, so large that the water seemed to have brimmed in them and widened them; and a brow like the swelling of a marble dome pressed between the two blank medallions which were his temples. Directly we glance at eyes and forehead, thus do we rhapsodize.
–Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Orlando: Sitting Still in a Chair and Thinking
2011, oil on canvas, 64 x 64”
What can the biographer do when his subject has put him in the predicament in which Orlando has now put us? Life, it has been agreed by everyone whose opinion is worth consulting, is the only fit subject for novelist or biographer; life, the same authorities have decided, has nothing whatever to do with sitting still in a chair and thinking. Thought and life are as the poles asunder. Therefore—since sitting in a chair and thinking is precisely what Orlando is doing now—there is nothing for it but to recite the calendar, tell one’s beads, blow one’s nose, stir the fire, look out of the window, until she has done. Orlando sat so still that you could have heard a pin drop. Would, indeed, that a pin had dropped! That would have been life of a kind.
-Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Reading the Rubaiyat: Study
2013, oil on panel, 14 x 11”
Each Morn a thousand Roses brings, you say;
Yes, but where leaves the Rose of Yesterday?
-Edward FitzGerald, trans., The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Abby with her Violin
2009, oil on panel, 11 x 14”
All night have the roses heard
The flute, violin, bassoon;
All night has the casement jessamine stirr’d
To the dancers dancing in tune;
Till a silence fell with the waking bird,
And a hush with the setting moon.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, Maud: A Monodrama
Maud Taber-Thomas 
Leave a Reply