Start with Art Archives - Page 11 of 44

Start with Art: Man in a Café by Juan Gris

October 19, 2022

She Prefers Neutrals...

She likes to play with the proportions - sometimes her coat is the darkest color, sometimes the lightest. And sometimes it's the color in the middle!

And when you wear neutrals, you can have other interesting signatures, like two-toned shoes, or corduroy pants...

They're planning a few trips this autumn and winter...

For this first one, in the truest heart of autumn, she has chosen to emphasize the brown in her wardrobe:

This is a small travel wardrobe - a Six-Pack... but she can get a lot of mileage from it:

She's quite sure that she will be packing a grey, denim blue and black wardrobe soon...

love,

Janice

p.s. Six years ago, ... View the Post

Start with Art: Revisiting Portraits Theatraux by Natalia Goncharova

September 19, 2022

Remember this heroine? She was going away EVERY weekend, to visit friends who have a summer house. She was trying pretty hard not to let on to her co-workers that she was wearing the same outfit every Friday and Monday...

I've never had a co-worker who would notice such a thing! Except for Belovedest, of course...

As our heroine start to plan her autumn travel wardrobe, she realizes that she might have to be sort of... flexible... with her colors!

This is a smart thing to remember - the fashion police are NOT going to come after you because you've decided that moss green is easier to find in the autumn than mint!

So every Friday, our heroine will be wearing this; eventually she might have gloves, or ... View the Post

Start With Art: Winter Solstice by Dame Barbara Hepworth

August 24, 2022

It seems a bit premature to be looking at art entitled Winter Solstice, but our heroine loves pastels!

She doesn't much care what anybody else wears - she's not interested in dark colors! She feels beautiful in pink, and lovely in sky blue...

The core of her wardrobe for cooler weather is gray, with a bit of denim and chambray tossed in for practicality:

please note - everybody's "Common Wardrobe" will be different - what I'm looking for are the core, neutral garments that form the base for the more expressive and statement garments and accessories in our wardrobes.

On those days, our heroine knows that she doesn't have to look any farther than these 9 pieces to get her dressed and out the ... View the Post

Start with Art: A Mother’s Love: The Polar Bear Family by Jason Carter

August 22, 2022

She loved his art the first minute she saw it! The clarity, simplicity, beautiful colors - all of it!

And she knew that this painting would be useful in helping her focus her ever-shrinking wardrobe:

She knows that the core of her wardrobe will be black, white and denim - this painting seems just right!

She start her autumn wardrobe planning with A Common Wardrobe. It's not called "common" because the clothes are cheap or run of the mill - it's called common because these are clothes that a LOT of people have in common!

That's a good thing - you can easily find them, they fit in easily when you're not sure what to wear, but best of all, the serve as a neutral background for whatever accents you wish to ... View the Post

Start with Art: The Red Maple at Lake George by Georgia O’Keeffe

July 11, 2022

The Best Laid Plans... She was planning to spend the autumn photographing leaves, and hiking, and enjoying the brisk air...

But instead, she's going to be touring with a political candidate whom she supports. It's a long story!

She doesn't want to pack much; she frankly doesn't want to think about clothing at all once she closes her suitcase. She's going to have quite enough on her mind!

So she's thinking that she will have room to pack 10 garments in her medium suitcase... Maybe a "Whatever's Clean 13" Wardrobe is what she needs, eh?

Realistically, she might be able to stop at home from time to time, but she wants to be as self-sufficient as possible when they're driving from small town to ... View the Post

Start with Art: Passenger by Sean Scully

July 8, 2022

As soon as she saw the painting, so many things became clearer...

It includes all of her favorite colors, but it's the title that really grabs her...

This is what she wants - after two and a half years of staying home and being careful - she wants to be a passenger!

And so she's leaving. As soon as the summer's over, she's going to buy a train pass and just GO...

She will choose destinations based on things like sporting events, or art exhibits, or other museum-type stuff... or maybe weather. Or something else!

She starts to plan her foolproof wardrobe now; anticipation is a big part of the travel fun, for her:

She loves the idea of a wardrobe based in black, and punctuated with bright colors. ... View the Post

Start with Art: The Golden Stairs by Sir Edward Coley Burney-Jones

June 24, 2022

Yes, you saw this painting a long time ago! That heroine was also traveling for a family celebration...

Let's take a close-up look at a bunch of these lovely ladies, and enjoy the color palette...

Our heroine is off for a quick weekend trip to a family wedding! She's taking Friday off of work, so that she will arrive early in the afternoon - certainly early enough for lunch with relatives, and possibly early enough for a quick nap:

Because the partying starts tonight, with the rehearsal and the following dinner, and then of course the wedding on Saturday! By Sunday, she just needs to drag herself to brunch before they run out of coffee, and then sleep on the train on the way home!

She wants to ... View the Post

Start with Art: Pink Gladiolus by Jane Peterson

June 15, 2022

Six Days a Month They moved WAY out of the city back in early 2020; if they didn't have to go into the office, it made sense to move someplace more remote... Much safer, back then...

But now, they're telling her that she needs to come into the office six days each month. WHO is going to be keeping track of this, one might wonder.

She doesn't HAVE office clothes, now. What she used to wear doesn't fit, and the way she dresses now on a regular basis will NOT cut it; life on a farm is NOT life at a desk!

So she's going to create the world's smallest work wardrobe (well, close!), based on a painting of her favorite flowers.

She starts with her most serious outfit - the sweater-blazer tends to make ... View the Post

Start with Art: Windows Open Simultaneously by Robert Delaunay

June 6, 2022

Iceland, and Packing in a Different Way

She knows her color palette, she KNOWS she's going somewhere relatively cool, and she knows what she wants to wear on the plane...

Is that enough?

She understands that she's going to be wearing her travel outfit for quite a while on her actual travel day, and she plans to wear all 3 garments frequently while she's there...

So she thinks... what additional garment - just ONE thing - would she bring with her for a cool place and lots of sightseeing?

There's a BIG advantage to packing this way - she remembers immediately that she wants to bring her labradorite earrings, so she grabs them and puts them in her little jewelry bag. And she digs her green socks out ... View the Post

It’s Like Our Own Private Art Gallery!

June 3, 2022

How many paintings do you suppose we've looked at here on The Vivienne Files?

I don't have any idea!

But my lovely friends in Canada (yes, Alison the bracelet goddess!) have pulled together a page for us from which we can browse ALL of The Vivienne Files Start with Art posts...

Not by title, or artist. BY IMAGE!!! For me, it's like wandering through a museum of all of my favorite paintings. (of course, I picked all of them!)

The timing couldn't be better - I'm having a fibromyalgia flare, which makes me tired, sore, and dumb as a stump! So browse away, and I will be back on Monday...

love,

Janice

p.s. Seven years ago, a travel capsule wardrobe in black, white and yellow focused on ... View the Post

Adding Accessories to a Wardrobe: Start with Art – Sunlight on the Road, Pontoise by Pissarro

May 30, 2022

This is the painting that inspired our heroine:

And this is the wardrobe that she assembled for the upcoming summer months; she lives in a nice mild climate...

Of course she needs accessories! Most women will at least want some shoes, and I suspect that most of us also like a couple of pieces of jewelry, a bag, and possibly a scarf or two...

But there are no rules - if you really AREN'T a jewelry person, or a scarf person, don't force yourself to be someone you're not. There's nothing at all elegant or beautiful about being untrue to yourself!

For the sake of fun, maybe our heroine is going to use this template as a guideline for her summer accessories:

Where does one start? Our heroine decides ... View the Post

Start with Art: Sunlight on the Road, Pontoise by Camille Pissarro

May 25, 2022

Self-Care

The medication changed her body. She's bigger now. But she's also better!

Now she needs a new wardrobe for the next few months; this is her plan:

She lives in a lovely part of the world, with a VERY temperate climate; it rarely gets below 29 degree F in the winter, and seldom above the mid-70s in the summer! Sounds like heaven to me...

Like all wise women, she start with her dark neutral, in basic but not boring pieces that can be worn and worn and worn...

Lovely light blue - a soft color like the sky full of clouds...

Green pants in the shade she envisioned were hard to find, so she just got another pair of grey pants! Why not...

And green... muted and beautiful...

Our ... View the Post