A dedication written to a collector's request, at the purchase of "Being Desired."

The evocative sensuality of abandonment in the naked female figure: Her name is perhaps "Katerina," or another name which ends in "ah."
She sits perched, back unsupported, straight up, revealing all of her skin to the implied presence
of her viewer -- perhaps seated on a Persian carpet, perhaps upon a bed's comforter, perhaps upon the soft moss of earth. She sits perched, thighs closed, with soft tension in her shoulders.. but leaning at once back and forward: back into the reverie of her own desire, the reverie of her own dream now being lived; and leaning forward, her forearms poised and giving... giving in to the
ready grasp of her lover.

Her eyes remain nearly closed, her sight drawn within; head tilted back to the side; lips slightly open. Wisps of her own blonde hair, slightly mussed across her eyes, are perhaps
all she sees from within her view.

A bright golden light from her left glows in her
soft skin, and this source of light illuminates her limbs -- a light in which we have forgotten the
time of day -- perhaps of refracted sunlight captured in the in the gentle creases of her inner
elbows -- a light glowing upon her outer wrist, traced in a long line up to her shoulder, shadowing where her arm caresses the side of her breast. Perhaps it is now the light of a
shaded lamp as daylight faded... for we have
now lost the sense of time, in the slowing of motions as we are drawn together.

The painter's frame is composed like a devotional art piece: the background of gray shadowed wall, with its green undertone, divides itself along a horizontal slope slightly declined down to the right, like the line of cushions against the wall behind, or an evenly cut stone wall... But every line now mesmerizes, like a line of Time that recedes slowly down to an edge beyond the canvas, moving her closer, into the moments which will follow.
... The shadow and light enclose the curvature of her hips -- almost a Cubist's shadow -- and surrounds her waist, giving the supple contours of her body, in the space of the artist's dimension -- giving form and equilibrium to her balance in motion, giving contour to her skin where the hollow of the navel becomes a mystery of
deep shadow. Her forearms and upper arms are turned forward, her hands reach forward to hold both the bottom corners of the frame. The shadowed sinews of her wrists support the self-assured carriage of her rib-cage, and the rib-cage the rise of her bosom.

The perfect swells of both her breasts, with their nipples that ask kisses, stand forth, to weight her closer forward in space, into her lover's gaze, and into his reach. And between these breasts the shadows fall into the divide where hides her heart within, beating with the knowledge of her own identity, and the meaning of her nakedness.

Written by Johnes Ruta
The York Square Gallery
12 March, 2004