A Deeper Hue Than Perse

Dante described the second step to pergatory as "a deeper hue than perse." According to E. G. Cuthbert and F. Atchley in "On English Liturgical Colours" contained in the 1904 Essays on Ceremonial, Dante's perse was a color mixed of purple and black, with black dominant.

Unexpected Altars

"I have found malaise in the midst of plenty and stirring hope in circumstances that should have produced despair. I have found evil in the most unexpected places, and also God."

~Philip Yancey, Finding God In Unexpected Places

Wait...

Concerning Sonia Sotomayer:

"How dare she be smart and aggressive? Wait, she’s a lawyer and a judge."

by alphafeminist at Feminist Philosophers blog

Gardenia Martini

We just love to float flowers Down South, and a gardenia in a martini glass is the quintessential symbol of the beginning of Summer when fireflies and candles light up air filled with the heady scent of Summer. Cheers to true Southerners who savor Gardenia Martinis in June.

The Ride II

I enjoy experimenting with a work of art to find new ways of looking at it with minor adjustments.  This is my original watercolor scanned, shading worked in Photoshop using a regular brush with different levels of opacity, cropped, made into a duotone and a filter made of moss loaded.  I use the moss texture in many of my works because I just like the softpress board feel.

I do not know what to call this piece except mixed media.  Still I keep it in a digital painting category because it does involve actual painting with a mouse.

Rapture

Yesterday I heard a poem entitled Rapture on NPR's The Writer's Almanac.  It amounted to conceptual rapture for me, worthy of serious meditation:

Rapture

by Richard Jones

In the desert, a traveler
returning to his family
is surprised
by a wild beast.

To save himself
from the fierce animal,
he leaps into a deep well
empty of water.

But at the bottom
is a dragon, waiting
with open mouth
to devour him.

The unhappy man,
not daring to go out
lest he should be
the prey of the beast,

not daring to jump
to the bottom
lest he should be
devoured by the dragon,

clings to the branch
of a bush growing
in the cracks of the well.
Hanging upon the bough,

he feels his hands
weaken, yet still
he clings, afraid
of his certain fate.

Then he sees two mice,
one white, the other black,
moving about the bush,
gnawing the roots.

The traveler sees this
and knows that he must
inevitably perish, that he will
never see his sons again.

But while thus hanging
he looks about and sees
on the leaves of the bush
some drops of honey.

These leaves
he reaches with his tongue
and licks the honey off,
with rapture.

"Rapture" by Richard Jones, from The Blessing: New and Selected Poems. © Copper Canyon Press, 2000.

The Ride

This is a work in progress made from a watercolor painting, scanned, detailed in Photoshop and filtered with diffuse glow.  More work is needed, and I will post progress when it happens.

Out From Beneath Swinging Chandeliers

"The Romans read places like faces, as outward revelations of inner living spirit.  Each place (like each person) had its individual Genius - which might manifest itself, on occasion, as a snake."

The Poetics of Gardens by Charles W. Moore, William J. Mitchell and William Turnbull

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I have taken to reading places during the last few years and find myself usually reading alone.  It does not seem to be a Western value to "read places" to find its "inner living spirit."  So I am heartened to know that my "reading" of places is not indicative of a loose screw, rather participation in a tradition that dates back to the Roman Empire.  Most friends dismissively flip that rational Western hand and pronounce that they do not "be-lieve" in that kind of stuff.

Still, how does one explain perfectly still chandeliers in a nave except for one lurching, swinging (first clockwise, then counter-clockwise)?

How can we understand how a place grips and exerts energy on the soul?  What are the energies there, and how do we find words, much less appropriate responses, to the energies of individual Genius that claw or stroke our emotions, influence our thinking and alternately leave us be and take us over?  How do we define these energies and determine whether they are friend or foe, out to nourish or destroy us?  How many of us know the disguises of evil?  Is the only way to be delivered from evil to walk through hell?

I don't care what Western hand flips in my face.  I know the power of place, both good and evil, so I approach places with caution these days. I watch where I go because I do not only think - I know - that demons dwell in places of beauty, and knowing this keeps me from sitting beneath swinging chandeliers.

Are there any swinging chandeliers over your head?  Have you been seduced lately?

Pentecost 2009

Seeing The World Through Turquoise Colored Glasses

This will not make any sense right now, but it will shortly.  Ideas being integrated for inspiration in the studio include:

• Thinking with the heart - combining left and right brain functions inspired by Jesus 
• My Own Darling Place inspired by Edna Ferber
• Turquoise Thinking inspired by Clare Graves' waves of existence.

Do other artists synthesize ideas for inspiration like this?  Does the muse bring you books, words spoken in conversation with others, a longing to drink a color or untangle a secret?  So you study before you create?

Does anyone else examine the world through turquoise colored glasses?