Heroes

We had this assignment to do a painting based on a personal hero of ours, alive or dead, famous or someone in our own life. I chose Tchaikovsky, partly for his gorgeous ballet scores (I must admit that I'm less familiar with his symphonic music) and partly for his broodingly romantic Tormented Russian Homosexual life.

In doing pictorial research for the painting, I found out that in artistic circles during that time, one could be gay as long as one didn't care what the hell anyone else thought or gossiped about. But apparently, Tchaikovsky was, at heart, an extremely conservative guy who felt very conflicted about his sexuality and never figured out a way to integrate it into his life.

Luckily for music and dance lovers the world over, he poured all of his tormented and glorious emotions into his music.

The image here is a detail of the painting. The likeness isn't exact-- it would have been more so if I had traced or gridded out the archival photo I had to work from. Tomorrow's entry will be of the whole painting, which like many of my others Isn't Quite Finished.

Just looked at this on the blog site: if I add glitter to the lips it bears a slight resemblance to MOI, quelle surprise...