Lid2340j

Oceanic mentality

My picture is about the first adult literay book I read: Jane Eyre. I was about ten years old and I think I only understood the first part where Jane was a bullied and lonely child who read a book about ornithology,hidden behind thick red curtains.
I never forgot that part, it is ingrained in my head.
Loving Bewick interprets the passage, at the start of the book, when Jane describes how she loses herself in Bewick's History of British Birds, and travels through its pages to the 'solitary rocks and promontories', the 'forlorn regions of dreary space', and 'death-white realms' haunted by the book's subjects.
It is a print by Paulo Rego. A fascinating modern painter and graphic artist with harsh and unique interpretations of works of literature. From the summer of 2001 for almost a year, the story of Jane Eyre was the obsessional subject of her work.

'With Bewick ( the book about birds) on my knee, I was then happy.' In the print of Jane billing the pelican's beak, Rego introduces a note of true sustenance: it is through the mind-food of books and pictures that Jane survives.

Because of Rego I reread the book time about ayear ago
for the fourth time. At this time of my life I found I focused more and more on the pedagogic qualities of Jane Eyre as a gouverness. Charlotte Brönte had marvellous ideas about being a teacher en in my view ahead of her time.

That's me in a nutshell.