The Idiot

I started painting Cody's portrait today. I've been after him to sit for me ever since I started reading The Idiot. Well, on Sunday he actually sat so I could sketch him. He didn't sit still for 5 minutes. So, I'm working from a photograph I took that day.


Cartier-Bresson to Michael Kimmelman: "You know, Picasso didn't like Bonnard and I can imagine why, because Picasso had no tenderness. It is only a very flat explanation to say that Bonnard is looking in a mirror in this painting. He's looking far, far beyond. To me he is the greatest painter of the century. Picasso was a genius, but that is something quite different."


Bonnard's Self Portrait (that Cartier-Bresson was looking at)











Bonnard to Matisse: "...portraits cannot be done in a day, or even two, but how to refuse a painter whom one has already refused several times and who finally comes ringing your doorbell, all sweaty with his kit and caboodle?"
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Why The Idiot? My husband does an amazing job living as an artist and as husband/Dad/provider to our family. In work circles he gets goofy glances about the fact that he sings and dances on tables on the weekends. From the bar crowd he gets goofy looks for mentioning his day job/lithotripsy.

True to Dostoevsky's The Idiot, my husband is actually quite genius. So was Bonnard. So was Picasso. Each just figures/figured out their own way of seeing and living as an artist.

Dostoevsky's Gania says to the Idiot: "And where on earth did I get the idea that you were an idiot? You always observe what other people pass by unnoticed; one could talk sense to you, but---"

Thank God "talking sense" into an "idiot" is actually quite impossible.
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EDIT: I found this forgotten painting of Cody (from one year ago) this evening when I remembered this portrait while talking to my friend about Bonnard's use of color. I had not even see the above Bonnard portrait until today and I suspected the colors were similar. In case you wonder why my husband is always sleeping in most of his portraits it is because it's the only time I can get him to be still. He loves my ninja portraits of him. No, not really. But I do it anyway!



This was from the day after Christmas this year (He needed a haircut):