franka waaldijk visual artist: notre dame des anges: series of spiritual woman portraits

Sunday, March 4, 2012

notre dame des anges: series of spiritual woman portraits

notre dame des anges (blue ballpoint) (own work, 2010, 21 x 30 cm, click on the image for an enlargement)

my discomfiture with our modern `enlightened' society runs deep. i hesitate to put all of it in writing, since negativism is so often frowned upon. i admit there is something to be said for positive suggestion how to improve, rather than `just' criticizing.

i intend to do some more criticizing also though (like in the previous post's drawing).

but on the positive side, i have been working, for years and years, on a series of `spiritual´ woman portraits...whatever that may mean. maybe it means something like: in the spirit of what i perceive as medieval spirituality connected to maria, mother of jesus.

i wrote earlier on this blog about the stunning 'mare de deu' sculptures from 13th-16th century catalonia. all very different, all very individual, all seemingly derived from real persons (in my eyes of course).

i also stated earlier that i'm not a fan of religion. but some form of spirituality seems to me the only way for humanity to pull itself out of the endless cycle of poverty, violence, greed, hate, war, ... you know.

so the woman portraits made in this series share the name `notre dame des anges´. this is a reference to the `medieval´ spirituality i mentioned above. but the portraits are of course not a depiction of maria. they are intended as portraits of contemporary women emanating this type of spirituality which i find hard to describe.

by the way, there is a similar series in the same vein, with man portraits, called `seigneur notre retraite´, referring in the same way to a `medieval´ spirituality i associate with jesus.

not being in favour of religion didn't stop me from being surprised to realize that religious art is being discriminated against, in the `contemporary art world´. someone pointed this out, i have to google to see who it was, will come back to you on this later. then again, as this same person pointed out, there are many art genres which are not considered `worthy´ by the contemporary art-world's elite.