Becoming inspired again

After a day setting-up a new top-of-the-range Macbook Pro, and testing it when printing Black and White portraits for my client, (successfully, after a tricky problem solve) I sighed at the thought of having to find a blip.

Climbing upstairs with my cup of tea and tow slices of toast, as I reached the last steps I saw afresh our astronomical chart on the wall. My eye caught the lovely diagrammatic representation of my Sun sign and the star which 'rules' it astrologically. Five shots later, I decided that the foreground might be more appropriate, and more legible!

So instead, I focussed on this detail of a design by Toulouse-Lautrec on the spine of a good biography of him written by Julia Frey. The painting was originally to feature as a book cover for 'Reine de joie, moeurs du demi-monde', by Victor Joze. That book was to also appear in serial form in the erotic magazine 'Le fin de siecle', with this poster used for its advertising. Lautrec used Georges Laserre and Luzarche d'Azay as his models in April 1892.

I did a lot of research for a project about impressionist painters and their world in Paris at this time, with many wonderful days spent in the old circular Reading Room of the British Museum, now unrecognisable. One of the heroines of my project was to be the lady featured in the next book on the shelf, who lived a very ground-breaking life as a circus performer, artists' model and later with the encouragement of Degas, a very good artist in her own right. On the way, she became the muse of Erik Satie the following year in 1893; It is believed this was the only intimate relationship Satie ever had. It lasted only six months and left Satie devastated.

I am glad I had to look for a blip, as I've now opened up memories of this world of Paris and my subsequent connections with it. Perhaps I will try the project again with fresh eyes.