The Galleries Are Almost Ready

As I said on November 28th, I was looking forward to spending some time over Christmas working on the galleries. And I have. After pulling apart my old house and going back to the prim basics, I rebuilt the original galleries to give me four in total, plus a warehouse as my new house.


The top three buildings are Gallery I, Gallery II, and Gallery III. Beneath those is my house, sat on a single megaprim 333 meters in the sky. And beneath that is Gallery IV, the one I intend to use for special, temporary collections as opposed to the permanent collections of the other three galleries.

The galleries are linked by a teleport system, so visitors can chose which collection they want to see. The home point is Gallery I, and my house is not on the teleport list - hey, I need a little privacy!

Galleries I and II are now fully populated and Gallery III still has some room for additions. As to Gallery IV's first special collection, I'm not quite sure yet. I have an idea but I'll hold that thought until the 1st of the year.

Keep checking back for details.

Closing in on the gallery

OK, so progress is slow. Very slow. But the Leominster Galleries are floating on high and waiting to be populated. Galleries I through III will house my permanent collection - or at least as permanent as I can make it, and the yet-to-be-constructed Gallery IV will be for special collections that change every couple of months.

Most of the paintings are 19th century with an overflow into the early 20th and a drop back into the 18th or even 17th. With some work, I hope to complement the galleries with an online repository of information about all the paintings, along with larger images and, where possible, links to other art sites.

With the Christmas vacation almost here, I hope to have some time to complete the galleries and launch them publicly. I'm already thinking of the first Gallery IV offering so come January 2010, I may have an announcement.

Oh, and if anyone has an idea for a logo for "The Leominster Galleries," just let me know ;)

Return of the New Romantics

I am a hopeless Romantic. And please take note of the upper case "R" there. The Romantic Movement covered most of the 19th century and its children included the Pre-Raphaelites and the Neoclassicists. Of the latter, I'm afraid I have an almost erotic fixation on the paintings of John William Waterhouse. For those who have never come across his works, you could do no better than taking a trip to the premier Waterhouse site at http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com

While browsing the site, take a peek at Circe Invidiosa, a positive riot of turquoise centered on the image of the witch, Circe. In the Odyssey, it was Circe who held Ulysses captive (or is it captivated) for many years before he escaped to travel home to Ithaca. In this painting, Circe is in the process of transforming the beautiful nymph Scylla into a hideous sea monster. Wicked, eh?
The only problem is that Waterhouse's Circe is stunningly gorgeous. If she IS evil, then it's an evil most men would die to be the victim of. With her slightly retrousse nose and large, dark eyes, it's impossible for me to find any fault with her. She is captivating and intriguing - a dangerous and fatal duo of qualities for a woman to have, in art or in life.

In life, Waterhouse was besotted by one of his models, Muriel Foster. Some critics have argues that JW only ever had one women in his paintings - I'd suggest two. But it doesn't take a degree in Fine Art to flick through the website to see that the same woman appears over and over in Waterhouse's paintings, and if that doesn't suggest an enchantment, I don't know what does. Ooh, "enchanting," a third dangerous adjective for a member of the fairer sex.

If you want to see the actual painting, you have to travel to the Adelaide Art Museum and venture into room 15. There you can stand for 15 minutes and simply stare at it. Which I did. I also took a photo, which is (a) forbidden, and (b) got me a stern lecture from some jumped up attendant who seemed to think it was OK to allow a bunch of school kids to wander around taking pictures with their cell phones but NOT some 40-year-old adult male to take ONE with a camera. Well fuck him; I did it anyway.

Unbeknownst to me, there was a second painting at the diagonally opposite location of the room that I am similarly enchanted by. In fact, it is on the walls of my Second Life house along with the Waterhouse. This is John Collier's Priestess of Delphi, yet another image of a femme fatale who, not surprisingly, bears a resemblance to Circe. Draped in red, the priestess has her eyes closed while she dreams up her prophecy high up in the mountains in Delphi, Greece.

Two women in one day. A priestess and a witch. A dangerous day indeed.