I Close My Eyes In Order to See

Over at One Powerful Hour this week's theme is "Eyes". I immediately thought of one of my favorite quotes from Paul Gauguin, "I close my eyes in order to see". I needed some images to work with so I went to the Wikipedia entry on Paul Gauguin. The photograph is one of Gauguin attributed to 1891. The hand with the orange rose is from one of his paintings, "Woman with a Flower", also from 1891.

I was originally going to to do an ATC but there was too much to squeeze on to it so I went with a 4x4 for a change. To really try to keep the total time under an hour I used scrapbooking paper for the background. While that was drying I printed and cut out the images and the quote. I mounted both the photograph and part of the painting on thin black card. Then I glued the photo and the quotes to background. Gauguin's eyes are sort of half closed but I glued a black bar over them for emphasis. By then the finishing touch, the woman's hand with the flower, was just about dry so I cut it out anyways. I was anxious to see it all come together! I used those little double stick foam mounting squares on the back of the cutout and positioned it so that the hand is reaching into the photograph.

I hope the finished piece conveys that perhaps Gauguin is daydreaming about both the woman and the painting...