“Each day I go to my studio full of joy; in the evening when obliged to stop because of darkness I can scarcely wait for the morning to come… My work is not only a pleasure, it has become a necessity. No matter how many other things I have in my life, if I cannot give myself to my dear painting I am miserable.” (Adolfe-William Bouguereau) Keep Reading
From The Book of Disquiet written by Fernando Pessoa. (1888-1935)
“What can I expect from myself? My sensation in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling. A sharp mind that only destroys me, and an unusual capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained. A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child.”
Frederic William Burton (1816-1900)
Dreams
Watercolor and body color over
-1861
“When…I see the strange plants of exotic lands, it seems to me that I enter into a dream.”
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910)
It is very funny that Rousseau painted all these exotic landscapes while he never Keep Reading
“I cannot be known
Better than you know me
Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man’s gleam
A better fate than for the common nights
Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth
In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude
Are no longer what they thought themselves to be
You cannot be known
Better than I know you.”
― Paul Éluard
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A WRITER LOVES HER CAT.
“I went to collect the few personal belongings which…I held to be invaluable: my cat, my resolve to travel, and my solitude.” ― Colette
Why is it that so many writers of today and in the past, like Colette for example, love cats so much? Keep Reading
We mourn the passing of a Leonard Norman Cohen: Canadian Singer, Songwriter, Poet and Novelist. Cohen died today on the 11th of November 2016, at the age of 82. For many years, Leonard Cohen has been revealing his soul to the world through his poetry and songwriting. Keep Reading
What is she thinking about, it makes you wonder if her disillusion – as depicted in this painting – could actually be an illusion in itself. A trick of the mind that causes this emotion inside, a feeling of sadness and disappointment. I so wish it could be true…
The large painting above dates back to around 1640 and is titled “The Disillusioned Medea” (also known as The Enchantress)
I was still little when I saw this painting called “Girl with Peaches” for the first time. I found it while looking onto one of the wonderfully bonded art books my aunt collected. This particular one was filled with Russian Painters, mostly from the late 18th and early 19th century. My aunt lived alone in her Paris apartment. But my parents and I visited her regularly, at least a few times a year at that time. It was a long drive, 7 hours at least but as a child that didn’t matter you always found a way to entertain yourself. Of course I spent many hours reading books.
“Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly being unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one’s own being. The mind swells out to fill the entire landscape, becoming so diffuse in the process that one loses the ability to keep it fastened to the physical self. The sun would rise from the eastern horizon, and cut it’s way across the empty sky, and sink below the western horizon. This was the only perceptible change in our surroundings. And in the movement of the sun, I felt something I hardly know how to name: some huge, cosmic love.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Peyrelebade Landscape, 1869
Odilon Redon
