Image and poem from: Soul Collective – Poems and Paintings, by Marthe Bijman (July 2025, 2nd Ed., Blurb Books, ISBN 979-8-31-996715-2). Painting: Acrylic on canvas. Poem: Quatrain.
PERFECT YOU
Trace the outline of his face — The amber eyes with feathered lashes The bold nose with its arching planes The lips curved into sensual s’s.
Perfect You
About Soul Collective
I wrote and did the art for Soul Collective while producing my music album, The Portrait. The person who inspired the portrait paintings in Soul Collective is my songwriting partner, Sean Berchik. Each of these portraits, painted since early 2024, has a poem that goes with it. Sometimes the poem came first, sometimes the painting did. The poems-and-paintings/paintings-and-poems are about music; the life of a musician; performing; writing; the creative process, art, and the collective that consists of him and me. Hence the title of the book – Soul Collective.
Each poem has a story
This poem is a description of classical beauty. The words “trace”, “outline”, and “sensual s’s” refer to the phenomenon in figurative and portrait art called the “Line of Beauty”. This line is the double, elongated “s” of the ogee shape, a shape which swings in two directions. It can be formed from the Fibonacci curve, or spiral, a graphic representation of the Fibonacci Sequence. This curve is often found in nature, for instance in the structure of sea shells and fern leafs. The Fibonacci curve contains the Golden Ratio, and from this can be drawn the double-s curve that is called the Line of Beauty.
One part of the s-curve – the Line of Beauty – is longer than the other, and the deviation lends mystery and allure, and a natural balance. The Line of Beauty fits perfectly when superimposed onto a face that is beautiful or handsome, since beauty in a face is often a matter of symmetrically balanced features that are in ideal proportions.
The Line of Beauty flows from the pupil of the eye, to the tip of the nose, the outer corner of the mouth, to the chin. I tried to portray that symmetry and allure in the painting and in the poem. (Here’s a video of how it works.)
SEVEN CIRCUMSTANCES 
—Perfect You
Image and poem from: Soul Collective – Poems and Paintings, by Marthe Bijman (July 2025, 2nd Ed., Blurb Books, ISBN 979-8-31-996715-2). Painting: Acrylic on canvas. Poem: Quatrain.
PERFECT YOU
Trace the outline of his face —
The amber eyes with feathered lashes
The bold nose with its arching planes
The lips curved into sensual s’s.
Perfect You
About Soul Collective
I wrote and did the art for Soul Collective while producing my music album, The Portrait. The person who inspired the portrait paintings in Soul Collective is my songwriting partner, Sean Berchik. Each of these portraits, painted since early 2024, has a poem that goes with it. Sometimes the poem came first, sometimes the painting did. The poems-and-paintings/paintings-and-poems are about music; the life of a musician; performing; writing; the creative process, art, and the collective that consists of him and me. Hence the title of the book – Soul Collective.
Each poem has a story
This poem is a description of classical beauty. The words “trace”, “outline”, and “sensual s’s” refer to the phenomenon in figurative and portrait art called the “Line of Beauty”. This line is the double, elongated “s” of the ogee shape, a shape which swings in two directions. It can be formed from the Fibonacci curve, or spiral, a graphic representation of the Fibonacci Sequence. This curve is often found in nature, for instance in the structure of sea shells and fern leafs. The Fibonacci curve contains the Golden Ratio, and from this can be drawn the double-s curve that is called the Line of Beauty.
One part of the s-curve – the Line of Beauty – is longer than the other, and the deviation lends mystery and allure, and a natural balance. The Line of Beauty fits perfectly when superimposed onto a face that is beautiful or handsome, since beauty in a face is often a matter of symmetrically balanced features that are in ideal proportions.
The Line of Beauty flows from the pupil of the eye, to the tip of the nose, the outer corner of the mouth, to the chin. I tried to portray that symmetry and allure in the painting and in the poem. (Here’s a video of how it works.)
Next time: Portrait/poem #2
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