Eye of the Beholder

Prologue: EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

For many artists, the source of creative power comes in the form of a shattering love

affair where the mistress dominates the artistic product of her artist for many years.

There may be other liaisons before, during and after, but this particular woman provides a

powerful energy that makes the artist give the world feelings tangible enough to keep.

She appears in picture after picture, drawing after drawing, marble after marble, until,

perhaps, she is replaced. One can see the arc of the love affair through the artist’s eyes.

Not all women can be the inspiration of a Tehura, a Camille, a Marie-Thérèse Walter, as not

all men can be Gauguin, Rodin, or Picasso, but all three women, as do the others included

in “EYE OF THE BEHOLDER”, leave an individual legacy to all who are female. In this world of

sexual liberation and casual encounters, it is good to know the once-in-a-lifetime passion,

the coup de foudre, can inspire men to heights of beauty and truth by virtue of itself

alone; that the men in this book have a community of fantasy and desire as seen through

the consistency of image and mood depicted by the artists chosen; that there is a

single inspiration in these particular works of art; the power of an overwhelming sexual

love.