'THAIS'

This is a piece I've done for a local fundraiser that's coming up in March. It started off being just an abstract design where I planned to use some Ginko leaves I'd saved from the fall. I'd worked on it to a point of feeling that it was 'almost' finished but needed something else and my husband, Bill, took a look at it and saw the woman's figure. She'd been waiting patiently on me! So I put a head on her shoulders and fixed her hair but she didn't get any arms.....read on & you'll understand.

Thaïs (Pronounced tah-eess) is an opera by Jules Massenet to the music of French composer Louis Gallet. The 'Meditation from Thais' is a classical piece that any serious violin student would have played. Even tho' I almost exclusively play traditional Irish music these days, I still have all my classical music and occasionally use it in my collages....my former teacher, Eloy Fominaya would be proud! (Incidentally, I use photocopies of the music...I don't destroy the originals!)

(A little background on the opera helps make sense of the piece.Thaïs, a female, is the main character of the opera which takes place in Egypt, where a Cenobite monk, attempts to convert Thaïs, a devotée of Venus (that's why she did't get arms!), to Christianity, but discovers too late that his obsession with her is rooted in lust; while Thais's true purity of heart is revealed, so is the religious man's baser nature. The work is often described as bearing a sort of religious eroticism....got this from Wikipedia so it's a fact!)