G is for Galatea

Digital Collage

Part of the Alphabet of Creativity series: a warning to artists not to become over-enamoured of their own creations!

The story of Galatea:
The sculptor Pygmalion saw so much to blame in women that he came at last to abhor the sex, and resolved to live unmarried. Instead he made a statue of ivory, so beautiful that no living woman came anywhere near it, and named her Galatea. Becoming totally besotted with the statue, Pygmalion asked Aphrodite to turn her into a real woman. Legend records that they then lived in eternal conjugal bliss. But I wonder if that's true. Real women have all kinds of real quirks; and flesh is prone to flaws and frailties in ways that ivory is not!