A Great Profile
60 x 48 inches
Mixed Media with Acrylic Binder on Canvas
In A Great Profile with Vermeer’s Woman in Blue Reading a Letter, one can experience feelings of awe from the fetus image, which reveals the forming eye, brain case, and the profile of well-developed features of fingers and face of a potential human not yet ready for thought or conscious action. The dark form directly surrounding the fetus head could be a womb or another head with a shape corresponding to the woman’s head. The curving, light blue band with dark blue outline is a repetition of the beautiful profile of the woman’s forehead and of a pregnant belly. One intention is to link the iconic Vermeer with contemporary knowledge of what is actually going on inside a woman’s womb, with the potentialities of symbolic reference moving from one photograph to the other. For me, in conjunction with recognition of the pregnant woman and fetus, there are prehensions of timeless awe in Vermeer’s accomplishment that can commingle with prehensions of awe we can feel in the Nilsson image. Repetitions of the “beautiful” profile in different contexts of fetus, womb and head hold our attention and give our mapping mind directions during the clash and integration of information given by the different contexts. The repetitions assist us to make fluid yet meaningful etymologies of meaning.