Shadows and Silence

In Cambridge last week for a day and saw the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam - Vermeer's Women: Secrets and Silence.

Four Vermeers and many of his contemporaries. It was all about contrasts: shadows and sunlight, inside and outside, public and private, about the internal and external lives of women, portrayed through their everyday domestic activities. It was the shadows against the sunlight and the silence of the women that stayed with me.

Of course in the shop outside, there were several representations of the painting that is not even there - the Girl with the Pearl Earring. The highlight of this exhibition was the Lacemaker, which came from the Louvre and had a fantastic frame. My daughter, by that time, having spent an intense hour in the museum, had seen enough and was struck by the frame rather than the painting. You might also like to know that the lighting of it is such that you can make wonderful shadow puppets on the wall!

I love the way that artists can say visually what we as writers expend so many words upon. My WIP is all about secrets and silence, inside and out, public and private, the layers that exist in life and how we deal with them.

The exhibition is free, as is entrance to the museum, and it runs until January 15th. Closed Mondays.