August 30, 2010
In
art, children's books, drawing, illustration
Prelude to My Next Book …
Things may get a little wild around here over the next few months…
August 23, 2010
In
art, communication, creativity, design, drawing, illustration, inspiration
Week 52: "52 Weeks of Peace"
As the “52 Weeks of Peace” series comes to its inevitable end, it’s my hope that the spirit of mindful peace will carry on long after the last posting. I hope you’ll find peace in unexpected places ~ and nurture its presence. I hope you’ll seek it, recognize it, allow it, and share it. There’s great power there… beginning with you, me, our families and friends. It doesn’t have to be a movement you join; more importantly, it’s a movement you feel within.
Here’s to planting, growing and tending gardens of peace ~ within ourselves as well as “out there”.
Thanks for sharing this journey together. Cheers all!
PS: Because the series started on September 1st, there will be a “bonus” posting next week.
PSS: Remember, all 52 Weeks are posted here!
August 17, 2010
In
art, fine art, illustration
Winslow Homer Commemorated
One of the great American painters, Winslow Homer (1836 ~ 1910), has his own US postal stamp. I’m glad to see it. Despite post office troubles, there’s still something quite honorable about what goes on a stamp.
Looking at this piece, so reminiscent of less complicated times, feels somehow exuberantly refreshing in today’s world.
The stamp, a reproduction of his 1874 painting “Boys in a Pasture”, was revealed a few days ago at the Maine’s Portland Museum of Art, in conjunction with an exhibit of 28 of Homer’s watercolor and oil paintings.
To see more of his work, here’s a nice slide show from the National Gallery of Art.
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And in case you want to know more…*
Winslow Homer was born in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1836, the second of the three children, all sons, of Henrietta Benson and Charles Savage Homer.
At the age of 19, Homer apprenticed with the J. H. Bufford’s lithographic firm in Boston. Although the superior quality of his work earned him more and more responsibility, he found the work stifling and tedious, and upon attaining his majority he left the shop to become a freelance illustrator.
In 1859 Homer moved to New York City, where he studied briefly at the National Academy of Design, took a few painting lessons with Frederic Rondel, and set up a studio at the 10th Street Studio Building. For the next 17 years, his major source of income came from drawings for illustrated weekly magazines, such as Harper’s Weekly, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, and Appleton’s Journal.
He devoted increasing attention to painting, however, and in 1865 was elected a member of the National Academy of Design and was further distinguished by the exhibition of his Prisoners at the Front in the Paris Exposition of 1866. Homer went to Paris that year, but little is known of his activities during the ten months he spent abroad.
Domestic travel for the next 15 years included trips to the White Mountains in the summers of 1868 and 1869, the Adirondacks, and Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1873. In 1875 he submitted his last drawing to Harper’s Weekly, ending his career as an illustrator. He traveled widely in the 1870s in New York State, to Virginia, and Massachusetts, and in 1881 he began a two-year stay in England, living in Cullercoats, near Newcastle.
(According to another bio, it is significant that, when Homer returned to Europe in 1881, he did not go back to Paris, which was bursting with American art students at the ateliers. He chose, instead, the small fishing community of Tynemouth, on the cold gray northeast coast of England.)
Returning to America in 1883, he settled on the rugged coast of Prout’s Neck, Maine, where he would live for the rest of his life. He continued to travel widely, to the Adirondacks, Canada, Bermuda, Florida, and the Caribbean, in all those places painting the watercolors upon which much of his later fame would be based.
In 1890 he painted the first of the series of seascapes at Prout’s Neck (the most admired of his late oil paintings). Homer died in his Prout’s Neck studio on September 30, 1910.
* References: http://whitemountainart.com/Biographies/bio_wh.htm and http://www.nga.gov/cgi-bin/pbio?15100
August 13, 2010
In
inspiration, work and play
Go Play!
I posted this piece a little over a year ago. But as I’ve been feeling “all work and no play”, I thought it worth a repeat performance. Sometimes you need reminding to make play a priority. So I’ll leave you with this, as I’m off … to play now!
The Importance of Playtime
When was the last time you jumped up and down like a kid, or played frisbee in the rain … just for the fun of it? If you have, you’re better off. If you haven’t, maybe it’s time!
I recently saw bits and pieces of a TV documentary about the power of play. It showed images of wild animals, who might normally be mortal enemies, engaged in play. And children, of course, using all their natural talent for having a good time.
The essential message though, was that play is not just for fun. And it’s not just for kids or animals. It’s actually really, really good for you.
And when you think of it, who doesn’t like to play? I know I do. And knowing that it’s vitally beneficial for our well-being, makes it even more inviting.
But sometimes we adults can get so darn serious, or acquire some heavy sense of self-importance, or feel so burdened with the weight of our individual worlds (not to mention the world at large) that we don’t make room, or forget to make time, or heaven forbid lose the ability, to be playful.
By continuing to “play” throughout our lives though, we increase our brain’s learning capacity and become more productive. We’re more balanced, happier and well adjusted. We work better, and we live better. And seriously, it’s a lot more fun.
As Stuart Brown talks about in the video below, “play” seems to be its own separate biological entity. It’s inborn. It has a great evolutionary purpose. And this I believe to be 100% true. Yet there really is no particular purpose to play other than the purpose TO play. The point is to have fun. And the benefits are in the side-effects: pure, unplanned, and positively life-giving.
Dr. Stuart Brown’s research shows play is not just joyful and energizing — it’s deeply involved with human development and intelligence. Through the National Institute for Play, he’s working to better understand its significance.
August 9, 2010
In
art, creativity, design
Week 50: "52 Weeks of Peace"
“Peace Chain”
I can hardly believe we’re already at week 50, with only two to go after this! I hope you’ve been enjoying the series ~ and who knows, maybe it’ll set off some kind of peace chain reaction …
August 3, 2010
In
books & stuff, words and language, writing
Tea and a Great Piece of Writing
A bit of a book review for my more literary friends…
Time has had its foot on the accelerator of late, driving us forward much too quickly, compressing what might normally be summer’s leisure into streaks and blurs of heat and humidity, flowers, bees and drying lawns.
But I’ve found a perfect book for the time-snippets I’ve been able to carve out to maintain my reading habit.
The Elegance of The Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery is a story told in the voices of two main characters: a brilliant, cynical young girl and a brilliant, middle-aged woman trapped by societal expectation in a low-class existence. I haven’t gotten terribly far, but it’s the kind of book that doesn’t require obsessive reading (which is why it’s just right for a summer season that’s squashed with to-do’s and squeezed between the schedule-laden seasons of spring and fall).
One of the things I’m most appreciating about The Elegance of The Hedgehog is the abundance of fabulous lines that tempt me to create the book’s very own list of quotes ~ which I haven’t done and won’t do, but the thought is testament enough to the author’s wordsmithing.
In any event, those of you who know me, know I enjoy my tea. So finding the topic of this particular entry appealing will be no surprise ~ but it’s the larger essence, the rise and fall of the thought process, the meditation, the skilled expanding and condensing of a moment speaking to life and power and subtlety that I found truly delightful .. and worthy of sharing.
So here it is:
♦
I pour the tea and we sip in silence. We have never had our tea together in the morning, and this break with our usual protocol imbues the ritual with a strange flavor.
Yes, this sudden transmutation in the order of things seems to enhance our pleasure, as if consecrating the unchanging nature of ritual established over our afternoons together, a ritual that has ripened into a solid and meaningful reality. Today, because it has been transgressed, our ritual suddenly acquires all its power; we are tasting the splendid gift of this unexpected morning as if it were some precious nectar; ordinary gestures have an extraordinary resonance, as we breathe in the fragrance of the tea, savor it, lower our cups, serve more, and sip again; every gesture has the bright aura of rebirth. At moments like this the web of life is revealed by the power of the ritual, and each time we renew our ceremony, the pleasure will be all the greater for our having violated one of its principles. Moments like this act as magical interludes, placing our hearts at the edge of our souls: fleetingly, yet intensely, a fragment of eternity has come to enrich time. Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn – and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes it merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn; human life continues to throb.
So, let us drink a cup of tea.
♦
(From pg. 91 of The Elegance of The Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery)
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ps: Other great reads this summer that I’d recommend have been “The Help” (Kathryn Stockett), and “The Art of Racing in The Rain” (Garth Stein). A comprehensive list of my favorite books can be found at patriciasaxton.wordpress.com
