My Favorite Model

"Artistic Muse"
2.5 x 3.5 inches
watercolour
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Meet my favorite model. She's able to hold long poses without moving at all. She never complains about being cold, she doesn't object to any setting, she never gets bored or hungry, and probably best of all, she's cheap.

I met Mary (that's what I'll call her today; I give her different names on different days, depending on my mood) one day while I was walking through my old neighbourhood in the Hague. I had been looking for some time for a plaster cast to use as a model for drawings. There didn't seem to be too many around, though a museum in Haarlem I'd been to did have them. Not one was less than 100 euros, and this was simply too much for me, since it was to be strictly a utilitarian purchase.

So there I was, walking down a messy street where my art supply shop stood next to an all-day sports cafe, a parking garage, and further on a wine store, a shady dealer in goods that were never the same from week to week, and a small tanning salon. At the very end of that street was a dingy dealer in secondhand goods and so-called antiques, with a lot of copper and heavy glass vases. In the middle of this dark shop, where in the background a group of short, fat, ageless cigar-smoking men sat in aimless togetherness she stood like a pristine virgin, radiating her whiteness to the passersby. You might say there was 'something about Mary' that drew me into the shop, where I haggled her down to 15 euros, and got her in a dirty secondhand shopping bag.

Since that day Mary has led a life of luxury in my home. She poses from time to time, sometimes in larger paintings in oil, and sometimes for these tiny ones in watercolour. Last weekend I set her up in front of my modest art collection, which includes works by the now extremely popular painting-a-day painters Duane Keiser and Julian Merrow-Smith, as well as a print by wood engraver Andy English.