Vavoom Vermeer: The Girl in the Red Hat
One of my favourite painters is Vermeer and one of my favourite paintings by him is The Girl in the Red Hat. He has truly captured everything here––not just the subject but also the feeling, light and colour in the work––all working together to create a masterpiece. I love especially the great splash of colour with her red hat as a central focus. Red, perhaps, representing a passion for all things in life.
Being an artist myself, I have studied Vermeer’s method, which involves a more elaborate form of the camera obscura, which results in a very life like painting, almost like a photo. I employed some of this in my most recent still life, Just Lemons, which I posted in a previous blog. It can help to study the masters! It’s good to explore new methods and ideas in art and life.––L.P. Kirkbride, September, 2020
