vita sackville-west paintings

these are from a series of paintings I am making of vita sackville-west [1892-1962]—british poet and novelist, noted gardener, lover of virginia woolf, arrogant aristocrat, serial seducer [mostly of women from the upper classes]. the paintings jump off something said about her by a friend of her mother, the architect edwin lutyens:”The only thing is to know and realize that vita has got blanks in herself and these blanks are blank. If I find a blank, I get a plank and bridge it and I don’t look down, lest I get vertigo.”which is to say, she appears to have seldom been present to the moment or the company in that moment. I will be posting more as I finish them. when I’m done I hope to have something like a biography in paint.

[I would very much like to have these pictures in chronological order, but I have not found a way to do this.]

vita in her last years

this is a tea party at vita’s house, long barn. lady ottoline morrell is next to vita in pink. I put myself behind vita [a slight liberty] and gave them a nice cake.

I imagined this scene off a letter from vita to virginia woolf.
Sunday [2 January 1927]
So you’re going to Rodmell on Tuesday. Very well: that involves the natural consequence that I’ll come up tomorrow (Monday,) and come to the basement. Now never say again that I don’t love you. I want dreadfully to see you. That is all there is to it…..
Till tomorrow, then, my dear— and very nice too. You’ll be nice to me, won’t you? And I’ll be nice to you.

possibly an engagement portrait, vita in her early 20s