Two weeks ago, I attended the opening reception for Joe Coventry and Linda Logan-Condon at The Watermelon Gallery located in the East Mountains. I had already fallen hard for Coventry’s paintings a few months ago while visiting the gallery for another art opening. However, on this evening I had the pleasure of meeting Logan-Condon for the first time and admiring the breathtaking photography of her travels around the globe.
East mountain resident and professional travel photographer Linda Logan-Condon says, “After a long and successful corporate career as a trainer, executive coach, facilitator and organizational development consultant, I am having a love affair with travel photography. I’m an idea woman, a pioneer, a woman on the edge, a women filled with wonder and discovery. I have traveled to many parts of the world and have learned to marvel at the "firsts" in my life...the first time I saw my child's face, the first time waking up in a new country, the first time hearing an unfamiliar language, the smell of a new destination. What a gift it is to view the world anew with each turn of the head and touch of the hand.” Logan-Condon has exhibited her award winning photography both state wide and nationally since 2008.
First, I would like to thank the readers who sent me well wishes, support, and comments on the first article in my discussion of Art and the Female Breast. I would also like to thank the many friends and colleagues who sent me books, articles, clothing, food and the others who shared with me their personal journey through cancer. The surgery is now behind me and I’m awaiting the pathology report on the mass and lymph nodes that were removed last Thursday. In the meantime, I wanted to continue my discussion and share with you one particular email that I received from Nina Baldwin, an artist from Rio Rancho.
In the email, Baldwin draws a connection to the Madonna and Child paintings by William Adolphe Bouguereau, the prolific French painter from the nineteenth century who was a mainstay of the Realism art movement, when she writes, his “Madonna paintings portray the female, fully clothed . . . all full of fabulous beauty . . . full of allurement, mystery, life, power, nurturing . . . full of spirit . . . truly beautiful!” According to Wikipedia, Bouguereau was a staunch traditionalist whose genre paintings and mythological themes were modern interpretations of Classical subjects, both pagan and Christian, with a concentration on the female human body. He employed traditional methods of working up a painting, including detailed pencil studies and oil sketches, and his careful method resulted in a pleasing and accurate rendering of the human form. His painting of skin, hands, and feet was particularly admired. The idealized world of his paintings, brought to life goddesses, nymphs, bathers, shepherdesses, and madonnas. Bouguereau painted plenty of naked women, but it was the ones he painted of them clothed which were particularly striking and inspirational.
Baldwin also shared her mother’s story of a mastectomy at 48 years old and how she survived and went on to live a full life only to pass away in her 70’s from heart disease. Baldwin writes, “It is the spirit of the woman which far surpasses all beauty and goodness found in any part of the body . . . truly, it is your spirit which is beautiful, sparkly, fun, wise, miraculous, alluring, mystifying, nurturing and powerful . . . your spirit is the source of all that good.” Baldwin’s email truly touched me and uplifted me. Can you find the beauty and allure in these Madonna and Child paintings?
Two weeks ago, I attended the opening reception for Joe Coventry and Linda Logan-Condon at The Watermelon Gallery located in the East Mountains. I had already fallen hard for Coventry’s paintings a few months ago while visiting the gallery for another art opening. However, on this evening I had the pleasure of meeting Logan-Condon for the first time and admiring the breathtaking photography of her travels around the globe.
East mountain resident and professional travel photographer Linda Logan-Condon says, “After a long and successful corporate career as a trainer, executive coach, facilitator and organizational development consultant, I am having a love affair with travel photography. I’m an idea woman, a pioneer, a woman on the edge, a women filled with wonder and discovery. I have traveled to many parts of the world and have learned to marvel at the "firsts" in my life...the first time I saw my child's face, the first time waking up in a new country, the first time hearing an unfamiliar language, the smell of a new destination. What a gift it is to view the world anew with each turn of the head and touch of the hand.” Logan-Condon has exhibited her award winning photography both state wide and nationally since 2008.
