Up and running once more !!!!!

As I posted here recently, I haven't been able to edit either of my blogs' layout recently due to problems with Blogger Layout page. This has been going on for several weeks and AT LAST I have found out what was causing the problem .... many months ago I added a scrolling bar feature to the top of my art blog (a rather nice banner showing a selection of my paintings) and apparently it was this that was preventing the Edit features on the Layout pages from working properly. And the reason? ..... all because I had not written the widget in Javascript on my Template!!!! [Not that I would know how to (!) and, in any case, everything worked fine initially until Blogger added some Super Dooper Whooper something or other .... so much for progress! ]

Anyway, I've deleted the scrolling banner from the other blog and am now able to access ALL the editing features on BOTH blogs. Happily this means that I have been able to UPDATE and ADD all the new artist members data to Art Blogs 4 U .... my apologies to ALL who have been patiently waiting ........ we now have 177 member artists!!

Hendrik Kerstens: The distant view of the other

Hendrik Kerstens is one of those artists who have managed to develop a career seemingly concentrating on one subject throughout the years. In his case, the model has been his daughter Paula. How different is she as a subject because of being his daughter? Not very. Which is as powerful a revelation as any. After all, one would expect some closeness, some special insight. Nothing of the sort. What we get is a serious young lady, as serious now as she was on the pictures being only a few years old. A gaze that refuses to talk. Our only partner in dialogue seems to be the light that paints the face gently, yet at least on surface, without the love one would expect. We see all the Vermeers and other 17th-century Flemish painters participate in this creation, yet this, here, is darker, less inviting. It doesn't pretend that something can come out of this encounter. Nothing more than a picture, a gaze, a world that is forever there, for us to admire, but not to discover.