The Incredible Lightness of Being

Welcome summer! Given that it's the longest day of the year - for those of us in this hemisphere, at least - I thought I'd post this vivid, sun-themed collage. The piece was done as a commission for a friend, who is giving it as a birthday gift to a friend of hers with breast cancer who has chosen the sun as her healing image.

The images are from a vintage atlas, catalog covers and book proofs. The girl was extracted from an early painting by Picasso - "Child Holding a Dove." It's a well-known image that I thought would be copyrighted, but discovered isn't. It's in the public domain, because it was created in 1901. That's well before the 1923 cut-off date, after which copyright gets tricky and requires investigation to be on the safe side.

The words encircling the girl are from the first stanza of Emily Dickinson's oft-quoted poem "Hope," which begins with the line "Hope is the thing with feathers ..." 5" x 8" on archival mat board with pencil and ink {SOLD}