To love a painting is to feel that this presence is… not an object but a voice.
~ Andre Malraux ~
Florists
by
Gertrude Fisk
I will admit he looks a little stern, but I would love to see her full face and perhaps have a chat with her – I was also attracted to the plants and flowers which surround the couple, as well as the color in this work.
The artist, Gertrude Horsford Fiske, was a Bostonian, who became a prominent artist in the first part of the twentieth century; and the first woman on the Massachusetts State Art Commission.
Art can never exist without naked beauty displaced.
~ William Blake ~
What I see is the couple staring in opposite directions, not as if they’re opposed to one another, but that their lines of sight intersect. She’s holding a flower that I imagine he plucked for her. The remaining flowers are in no way perfect – representing a long life that has had it’s tribulations but in the end is still beautiful and fragrant. I see a quiet resolve between them – that an economy of words exists because so much has already been said in their life together. Sometimes silence is the most sincere form of communication.