vita “with” her family

24”x24” oil on canvas

vita in her old age

24”x24”

oil on canvas

vita’s desk in tower at sissinghurst

18x18” oil on canvas

these are the first in a series of paintings I’m making of vita sackville-west [1892-1962]—british poet and novelist, noted gardener, lover of virginia woolf, serial seducer. the paintings jump off something said about her by a friend of her mother, the architect edwin lutyens:

"The only thing is to know and realize that vita has got blanks in herself and these blanks are blank. If I find a blank, I get a plank and bridge it and I don't look down, lest I get vertigo."

which is to say, she appears to have seldom been present to the moment or the company in that moment.