"I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her, and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you."
- Frida Kahlo
I was a bookish, introspective child who from a very young age became fascinated with people's life stories. I read, rather unusually, lots of biographies and autobiographies and was certainly influenced and inspired by many of the artists and writers I read about.
Long before Google existed, I would read book upon book about the particular person I happened to be interested in, Dora Carrington, Virginia Woolf, Joan Didion, Patricia Neal, Isabella Blow and the beautiful Frida Kahlo.
Frida's quote above spoke to me personally, I was (and probably still am) that other strange, flawed, bizarre person she was appealing to!
Frida's art was autobiographical, her life was blighted by her physical ailments, chronic pain and scores of surgeries to put her back together again, her talents as an artist were irrepressible.
Frida was born in Mexico City in 1907, around the age of six she contracted polio and was bedridden for 9 months. Her indomitable spirit shone when she attended school, she was known for her vibrancy and love of colourful clothes and jewellery. When she met muralist Diego Rivera who was nearly 23 years older than her, she told a friend that she would someday have his baby.
As Joan Didion famously quoted: 'life changes in an instant.' Frida was involved in an accident which would colour the rest of her life. Travelling on a bus which crashed, Frida was impailed by a steel handrail, which went into her hip and out the other side. During her long recovery Frida began painting self portraits, she said 'I paint myself because I am so often alone.'
Frida did marry Rivera, however, it wasn't a traditional union and was blighted by Rivera's infidelities and Frida's inability to bear a child. Her painting, the flying bed was a painful self portrait following her two miscarriages.
In 1953 Frida had her leg amputated as a result of gangrene, she died at the young age of 47 and remains a huge inspiration to many women and artists today.
My love of literature, art and life has meant I have always kept journals, I love writing! I also love cooking which in its self is an art form, ingredients are the notes that make the music and the words in the novel. Food is aesthetic, it appeals to the senses: smell, taste, touch and sight. To spend time eating in beautiful surroundings is akin to going to the theatre or an art gallery.
Beautifully presented food is an art form, a picture on a plate. The photos are of some of the dishes I enjoyed whilst in Spain.
'Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light. Tragedy is the most ridiculous thing.'
-Frida Kahlo
'Eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.'
-Ecclesiastes
Love Donna xxxxxx
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