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Seated Woman with a Parasol, Georges Seurat
“I saw a painting by Seurat - Seated Woman With A Parasol - in a book on Impressionism. I was drawn to it and I started to think about Victorian women and then some women today, the type of women who don’t want to intimidate their partner and so allow themselves to become reduced so the other person can feel confident.”
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I was drawn to this woman in this painting, even though we’re so different in so many ways…But still, I was relating to her because she seemed to be able to weather the storm. And the character in Parasol, our female character who, I sing from that point of view, is trapped. Whether she’s going through a divorce or what’s happening to her, there is an end of a relationship, that’s how the whole album starts. It starts with the end, the end of a relationship. And she knows that in order to survive this relationship so that she’s not completely erased - there are parts of herself that she’s had to leave behind in order to stay in it - and she realizes that she has to confront it. So she looks to the Seated Woman with the Parasol, this Victorian woman, for clues on how to not be erased. So she looks to the painting and the painting helps her to see that she has to shape-shift, she has to be able to walk in and out of paintings in such a way that he won’t be able to reach out and control her anymore…”
—Tori on the inspiration behind the song “Parasol”
(via paperclipcastle)
