JanesWorld - Of Art and Attraction

JanesWorld

 

Welcome to JanesWorld – where I look up the trouser leg of world events from my five foot two vantage point.

Of Art and Attraction

 I was lucky enough to visit an art exhibition this weekend called “A Victorian Obsession”. It was a collection of paintings and sketches by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.  The exhibition was held at the Leighton House Museum in Holland Park.  Not only was the art on show delightful but the museum itself was breath-taking.  A room called the Arab Hall is decorated with deep blue tiles and stained glass with a fountain at its centre. It is jaw-droppingly beautiful. Many of the paintings by the Pre-Raphaelites had a similar effect on me. I stared open mouthed at not only the beauty of the painting but at the ability of the artist to capture such detail. OK, so maybe I’m biased towards the Brotherhood because they favour redheads as models but before I discovered their work, art had never moved me.  Standing in front of The Lady of Shalott in Tate Britain renders me speechless and those of you who know me will understand the rarity of such an occurrence.

I have a special admiration for William Morris; a man who saw the folly in industrialism. If you are controlling a machine that makes plates, rather than hand-crafting the plates, you are not enriched by the process of creation, he said. It’s a sad world where people no longer have an emotional link to the production process, I think.  Maybe that’s why there are so many frustrated artists and musicians in every office building in the land.

I have been pondering the conundrum of how to make more people attracted to my books. There is a real pleasure in the creation of an imaginary world but as a writer, you write because you want people to enter that world and share in its delights. With over 2 million books on Amazon, how can I get people to find mine? One way is through an author page, according to popular advice but there’s a dilemma. How much of the real me do I want people to see? And do I put a picture on it and show myself to the world? Perhaps I’ll choose a photo from several years ago when I was younger and thinner. Now you may argue that my picture doesn’t make a difference to my book sales but I fear, in today’s world, it does. I’m not saying people don’t buy a book by an author unless they find them attractive but we all judge by appearance. It’s nature. The doe is attracted to the stag with the biggest horns and teenyboppers are attracted to the pretty boys in the latest band.

I think we fight against nature at our peril. It’s another side to what William Morris said; it’s in our nature to make things. And it’s in our nature to like attractive things.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to search through my photo archive from the 80s. Are perms back in yet?

Till next week
Jane

www.retrosexualtrilogy.com

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