Good things come to those who wait

You know when you mean to go to an exhibition and you don't go straight away and think that you'll get round to it, and then you forget all about it, and as a result miss it? Well, Wilhelm Hammershoi's London exhibition about 11 years ago was one of those for me. I've waited and waited for a new one to come, with no luck, and then finally, a few months ago, I read that there one was coming to Paris this spring. Z and I had started dreaming of a Paris trip back in September when I was visiting her in Amsterdam, and reading about the Hammershoi exhibition gave us the time of year we should go. And, of course it didn't disappoint (although it was very busy). I came across my first Hammershoi picture here in London a couple of years ago at the National Gallery, and I think I wrote about it here that I actually started crying when I saw it (picture 5 here), which was a surreal experience, but I felt that picture so strongly. The stillness in it spoke to me, and seeing the subject (Hammershoi's wife Ida) from behind like that, made me think of how I never post the faces of my nearest and dearest, and as a result tend to shoot them from behind. I'm also a huge fan of paintings of domestic scenes, capturing everyday life, something that Hammershoi mostly painted. These paintings are quite small in real life, which adds to the non-grandness of them. They were mostly painted in the late 1800's, and Hammershoi painted mainly scenes from his own apartment, editing out most of the furniture and only painting what he thought necessary. A minimalist in other words... If you find yourself in Paris before the 22nd of July I urge you to go, and book the tickets in advance, as the queue was pretty long. I'm so grateful that I finally got to see a selection of his paintings, even if the wait was 11 years in the making.