Another pretty cool production as always great work Carol!!

And they seem to be floating -- freedom.

Beautiful!!

this is beautiful!

Lovely Carol

ok, time for another unbearably long comment (you probably have to bring a thermos and 3-course meal...and maybe a cot). First, your story has the feel of an old folktale. And your poetry shows a lot of sensitive rhyme, carrying rhyme through every stanza, using it in various configurations to give lilt and punch to your story, at each key point. And the story is pure folklore and myth, and leaves us with something so typical of magical folktales---the ballet shoes disappear, but one day they'll reappear, to kindle the flame of another young dancer. A real Carol story, for adults and also children.

As an aside, when I studied classical piano as a child and teen, I went downtown chicago for lessons, to an old dusty building filled with music studios AND dance studios. Studying Beethoven and Bach at age 12 was harrowing (with those old European teachers who wanted us to reach the stars); but every time I went home, I passed the dance floors; and, whenever I looked in, omg: Those young ballet dancers were going through hell to stretch their bodies into air, and they did it over and over and over...and I thought, my travails are nothing compared to this! (If I told you all this before, bear with me.) One day I spoke to one of the young ballerinas, and asked her if she hates her teacher: She said "hate her? I LOVE her! I'd go to the ends of the EARTH for her! I want to dance on the clouds!" That's the artistic call!

So. To the painting...Man, to see an artist in their prime is the best. You've been in your prime a long time, and it makes me see your works with a big "yessss! she did it again..." This hits the 'canvas' easefully. Whatever you go through to make these. your art just feels like it 'happened', it appeared, as if it had been waiting for people to come along, and, whoosh: It appeared. Again, you have these salmon pinks---another of a long series of hues you create which are mixes of this and that, and which hit just the right, unique note. I love it here. You also have reds and greens and pinks (normal pinks), and so on. The bed of roses on which her shoes sit is gorgeous, but it also reminds me of ballet clothing, as it has some of that feel; and also the feel of floral wall designs that you see all over the venerable buildings of Paris. Only you've undulated them, stirred them into these sensual swirls and maelstroms. And roses emerge out of them, and you gave a kind of ghostly cast to them---to the roses in the 'bed'---which suits your poem, as it looks like something that was lost and then newly found. Something of the imagination and soul...

The ribbons (ties/sashes---I don't know the exact word) are painted with painterly panache, with darker purples and grays for the shadows, in which you never abandon the sheen of the satin. (It's easy, sometimes, to forget how fine your actual painting is, in the midst of all the drama, swirl and cosmic process you create. The sashes flow all over the image. (And you know: The background also looks like gigantic leaves, only made of the silk that the sashes are made of. Then again, the background feels like gigantic chiffon scarves, or other things a ballerina might wear in performance. I don't know if you intended that, but you sure created that feeling to me.)

The sashes pick up the flow of the background...then the slippers: What painting, here! The insides are very active, your strokes are full and flowing with yellows and pinks, etc. And the outsides are splendid: Not only for their sheen, and their white (or pale yellow) swaths showing reflection of light; but for those roses. You've managed to paint them as if they were truly on the surface of a satin slipper, including the not-easy-to-paint contours of the satin, and its shadows, etc. There are many levels of reality in that, and you captured them seamlessly. The slippers are gorgeous, worthy of the painting all by themsleves. And the darkened salmon pinks of that background (it also looks like plumes!) makes a perfect backdrop to the slippers.

It's a big undulating offering, very suitable to the 19th C dance repertoire known so well in ballet, and it gushes all over the frame. Since you put us 'in medias res', (in the middle of it all, we see that the background goes on past the frame---which is kind of like the ballet dancer's world living on beyond time. Beautiful work, Carol; and more of your melding one subject with another---in this case flowers with the slippers, and world, of ballet. Magical as your tale...gorgeous work!

Mark, thanks so much for your awesome comment. I’m so glad you enjoyed my story/poem. I do like writing them and telling the story of the art. I really enjoyed your memory of taking piano lessons and seeing the ballet dancers, with one of them saying how much she ‘loved’ her teacher for making her work harder. It is so true … the artistic all makes us reach for the clouds and higher if we could. Interesting you mentioned the background. I wanted it to resemble moving cloth, like a ballerina costume, as if it were also dancing. And have a vintage feel, with the ballet slippers resting on it and yet kind of floating above, too, like a dream. Your description of this ghostly roses on the cloth is truly inspired and so beautiful … ‘Something of the imagination and soul …’ That is what your comments are … something of the imagination and soul. I wanted the ballet shoes to be a garden of roses, kind of blooming with life and possibilities. And yes, I gave them a life beyond the dancing, in the story. As always, you see entire ballets in my work with your vision and they are always an inspiration that keeps the artist in me dancing and trying to reach new heights