White Madonna & Child Niche, Aix-en-Provence

photo © Mona Diane Conner 2008

I've made three drawings in my effort to start a new pastel of a beautiful white Madonna & Child niche statue that I photographed in Aix-en-Provence during my trip to France in 2008. It has taken three tries to decide what part of it I want to include for a large pastel painting. Sorry for an extraneous, uneven tone in my digital shots of my drawings, (strictly practical compositional sketches, rather than artworks themselves), but you can see how I started off wanting to show most of the niche structure at first, and then began to zero in more.

Since I also really like the idea of portraying part of the lamp, as in my photo, I am doing a fourth drawing for a miniature painting of this same scene (which will roll out on my miniature painting blog). My miniature version will include the lamp and give me an opportunity to show the entire structure of the niche that surrounds this statue. But for my pastel I want to dramatically zero in on the Madonna & Child itself, so the drawing at the top of the post shows you how it will be composed.

I had a search to locate a certain color of the pastel surface I wanted, only to get it home and discover that I got the color I want but the surface is defective. As a result, I may try doing this on a darker color than I would have liked just to get it started. With all this preliminary action going on, I'm asking Mary to please support my effort to paint the White Madonna & Child!

I was very charmed while in Aix-en-Provence to discover these niche statues of Mary and other saints which seem to adorn every building corner there, making it one reason that Aix-en-Provence was my favorite spot in Southern France. It's going to be a fun, too, painting more niches like the White Madonna & Child over a period of time.

"Surprise Daddy!"

"Mona and Ben" 5 1/8" x 6 3/4", charcoal and pastel on gray sand-grit pastel paper (NFS)

I forgot that I wanted to do this post on both of my blogs:  My father passed away in April '07, and March 18 of this week would have been his 86th birthday, and it is still a tough week for me.  I wanted to honor his memory with one post, since my blogs began after he passed.  I love knowing that if he were still here, he would be on his computer checking them every day!  I'm sure he is enjoying them in spirit anyway.  This is drawn from my favorite photo of Dad and I, and the photo-version is also my screensaver.  I have a post coming up for my Mom within the next month also, but this one's for you Dad.  Love you always! 

preliminary drawing for "The 'Mary' in Me"

I've started this sketch to begin exploring the 'Mary' within me, by drawing myself from looking directly in the mirror.  Did you notice that before I posted this I also flipped the image so that I could be seen as others see me also?

The 'Divine' in Arlynne

"The 'Divine' in Arlynne," 25"W x 19"H, pastel and charcoal on blue paper

Next I did a study, "The 'Divine' in Arlynne."  I discovered, once I had made this pastel, that the the Divine aspect I see within Arlynne is actually the Hebrew character of Ruth.  Although it's much more complex in terms of scriptural interpretation, and it's only part of what I see in Arlynne, one example is that in Ruth's life she faced difficult situations by delivering strength with hesed, or lovingkindness. 

It occurs to me underneath it all that if lovingkindness is genuine, it's actually our lovingkindness, our compassion, that helps us to be strong in the face of our difficulties, and not the other way around, but what do you think?  Do you see the 'Ruth' in it's dual nature as it expresses itself through Arlynne in this drawing too?