Books & Individuality

Click on image for larger view.

Well - it's been 2 days now and I still can't locate my book on Carl and Karin Larsson. So I'll just have to reconnoiter and write down things that I remember reading, but things which I can't verify by checking with the book. I just pray that I don't skew historical fact. However, the things that I remember are not going to be of historical significance. They are significant to me. And that is what is important.

In elementary school, one of my teachers would quote some brilliant person who said, to the effect, that if you can read you can conquer the world. In my pre-pubescent literal mind, I couldn't fit that concept into my brain. It was lofty nomenclature that I sandwiched in a cerebral side-pocket along with "the shot that was heard 'round the world" (get away!!) for some future date. It is shameful to say, but it wasn't until I became an adult that I began to more fully understand the truth of the concept about books. So fully have I bought into that motto now, that our house is crammed from floor to ceiling in every room with volumes on this, that and the other thing. Have I conquered the world? No. But perhaps I've grabbed onto a corner of it. At least I know that if there is anything that I need to know how to do, I can find a book, or a a link, or a YouTube to tell me how. And am I forever grateful!

Carl Larsson has been a longtime favorite artist of mine. He's very popular in Sweden, and I hope someday to visit his home. (Since I don't have the book in front of me, I can't remember how to spell his hometown so I won't try.) His art at the end of the 19th and early 20th centuries was noted for depicting family and domestic homelife. He painted what he loved: his wife, his children and his home. He painted them with charm and joy. I don't think he was particularly joyful all the time. After all, he was an artist and artists suffer, as all of us artists are aware. But he still knew that his wife and his home were his stability. He always added a flower somewhere in his paintings.

As much as I appreciate Carl Larsson's work, it is his wife, Karin, who fascinated me as I read about her in the book that I'm still looking for. She had lots of children. And she encouraged her husband emotionally who painted her all the time. Most of the time she is clearly portrayed in the foreground, but you may also find her as a shadowy figure who creates pictoral balance. In the painting above, she is both in the foreground reading and in the background walking past the window as she strides right out of the painting.

Karin lived in a time in which fashion was clearly set. Women wore corsets; it was clearly determined what was proper for morning wear and what one wore to make afternoon visits. Deviation from the norm was cause for the eyebrow to be raised. Mrs. Larsson was not too concerned about that. She wore loose clothing. Her dresses were long, but they were comfortable. Her nod to current fashion was in the length of her dresses and the style of her sleeves. Everything else was free to interpretation! She made the children's clothing comfortable in a time when children were to be dressed like miniature adults.

I found that her Individuality became an area of challenge and encouragement to me. I have thought about her a lot as I look at my wardrobe and think about what I will and will not wear. Comfort is of enormous importance to me, and because of the snippet I got from this book about Karin's Individuality, I am wanting to become more Individual in what I wear, too. I will not throw the baby out with the bathwater since I will look at the colors and styles of what is worn today, but I will definately eschew certain aspects of it which I think are absurd. What gave me this freedom? I read it in a book! After all, if you can read, you can conquer the world - at least your own world.

Graphic made based on tutorial by Designs by Tyra