Amsterdam - the late fifties

This is a photo my father took of his sister Katinka Bruin-van Rood and me when we were visiting 'home'- Holland in about 1959 I think. It was Amsterdam, my grandmother's house, as far as I can remember.

My aunt was also known as Toos, and much loved by all of us. You can see here what a very beautiful woman she was. Full of life and intelligence. She loved her brother (my father, as you can see here too).
She was a great sculptress,  and probably inspired my to take the career path I have taken. My parents would leave us in her
studio for a day, and she would give us clay and set projects for us.
I once spent a whole day making 'a glass of water' out of clay. I was so excited that you could make anything, anything out if this wonderful pliable substance. I can still smell that wonderful earthy smell when I think about her studio. And the pale Amsterdam light flooding in through the tall windows.

On the left here is one of her bronze cast sculptures which I treasure. She adored cats, and always had them in pairs.
But even though that's what this depicts, there is a lot more going on, it has something about it which reminds me of the 'Tree of Life', something ancient and magical.

Katinka lives on in all who knew her, she was luminous and unforgettable.

an ode to Matisse's dance

I first saw this painting 'in-the-flesh', when I visited MOMA in NYC in 1999. I didn't expect to be quite so profoundly thrown and moved...It was a painting I had often soaked in from reproductions in books and on posters. It is so very famous. When I was a child, I thought it might be some kind of tarot card, its magical impact on my psyche had already begun by the time I was about eleven, when I saw a book my aunt, the Dutch sculptor, Katinka van Rood-Bruin, had in her Amsterdam studio.  

Her brother, my father had died just months before, and that day my heart was aching and heavy with grief.  So when I stood in front of this work, the tears flooded and I had to take deep breaths so that I didn't wail with passion and emotion. I was in front of it for about half an hour. All the wonderful works in that Museum were calling me, their voice faint and easily put on hold while Matisse's dance and I communed. 

I felt so deeply held and healed by the Spirit of this extraordinarily rhythmic and beautiful work.