"A Salute to the Girl Before a Mirror"

Semi Abstract postcard

This painting was conceived from thumbing through a book on Salvador Dali. I came across a picture noted as Dali’s Paranoiac Village (c.1931). Sometime in the early 1930's Pablo Picasso sent Salvador Dali a postcard of African villagers which, when turned on its side, resembles a face. See the images above for a visual inspection. I was looking at a Picasso book later on, several years later, and ran across his painting “Girl Before a Mirror”.

In the description or notes of the painting, as I was reading, I believe the girl in the painting is pregnant. I was going through something similar of sorts with the lover of mine at the time so the piece rather struck home to me. I decided to quasi replicate the left side of the painting. I didn’t like it to much presented vertical so I turned it on the side and made a landscape out of it, obviously not hiding the female form.

The word dreams appears from where I do not remember, I know it had something to do with future hope. The painting was about 80 percent done back in 2004, never finished it and it wandered around life with me in the studios until 2023. I sanded the old paint down, to include the dream part and repainted over the remaining image that was still there. You could still see the entire painting it was just all flat and smooth now, ready to be completed. I finished the sky, signed it and now I am satisfied with it thoroughly.