After seeing an exhibit featuring works by Alfons Maria Mucha, I decided to sit outdoors and sketch several of the iconic images, making them my own through variations and use of space. The images compelled me because, in many ways, they capture what is most compelling and beautiful about his Art Nouveau style: flowing swirls, repeated fluid geometric patterns, strong contrast, and a timelessness in which nature, beauty, and femininity all seem to blend and reflect each other. There is some sort of darkness there, too, a romanticism in which a woman is placed within a frame that could be seen as glorification or also entrapment; trapped on a lovely pedestal, in a sense. I choose to see the former side and more of the celebration of such romantic ideals... in either case, she is separate in form.
