Picture for One Moment

 

"Walk on a rainbow trail; walk on a trail of song, and all about you will be beauty. There is a way out of every dark mist, over a rainbow trail."
Robert Motherwell

On Wednesday, after work and during a phone conversation with my daughter, I looked to the east through the glass and was lucky enough to see this. 

 

In New England, it's been rainy, humid and very buggy. We're looking forward to crisp, sunny days. More often than not, Autumn here has much to offer in the way of natural beauty in peak leaf season, an abundance of crops from local farms and many fairs and festivals.  I'm especially looking forward to the The Garlic Festival, with its hippie vibes and emphasis on sustainability, lots of great organic food and of course, a garlic stand to beat the band. And Wayne wincing at the garlic I'm about to consume. It's a good thing I am in possession of other charms. ;-)

 

 

A good Autumnal Equinox to you! And a song. One I think I play every year on The Pagan Sphinx Harvest Festival, written by Andy Partridge of XTC. I truly hope you can access it where you are. It is sublime. A modern masterpiece.

Lyrics to Harvest Festival :
See the flowers round the altar
See the peaches in tins 'neath the headmaster's chair
Harvest festival

See the two who've been chosen
See them walk hand in hand to the front of the hall

Harvest festival
Harvest festival
What was best of all was the
Longing look you gave me
That longing look
More than enough to keep me fed all year

See the children with baskets
See their hair cut like corn neatly combed in their rows

Harvest festival
Harvest festival
What was best of all was the
Longing look you gave me
That longing look
Across the hymnbooks and the canvas chairs
The longing look you gave me
That longing look
More than enough to keep me fed all year

And what a year when the exams and crops all failed
Of course you passed and you were never seen again
We all grew and we got screwed and cut and nailed
Then out of nowhere invitation in gold pen

See the flowers round the altar
See that you two got married and I wish you well

Harvest festival
Harvest festival
What was best of all was the
Longing look you gave me
That longing look
Across the hymnbooks and the canvas chairs
The longing look you gave me
That longing look
More than enough to keep me fed all year

Harvest festival

 

 

Peace and all groovy things,
Gina

 

Ruby Tuesday Travels Back in Time

I was inspired by Ralph of Airhead 55 (out of Connecticut), who often posts photos from his childhood and of his own children. Thanks, Ralph!  Here are The Girls going for a walk up a country road.  The one in white is the older sister, but by only sixteen months! This was taken in Spring of '92. They were three and four. Now they are twenty-two and twenty-three.  Yikes.

" We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it. "

~George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss, 1860

What's been going on with all of you? How did February decide to treat you?
Fondly, PS

To see other Ruby Tuesday participants, click here

ABC Wednesday - F

F is for Freud

 British painter, born 1922

Lucian Freud bio

"A painter's tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art."

- Lucian Freud 

:

From Whitehot Magazine:

Lucian Freud’s tireless exploration of the human form, removed from the romantic pedestal, and examined in the most minute and disturbing detail, makes him the most interesting British painter of his generation.
Freud has produced stunning figurative paintings and portraits for over sixty years, but these lesser known etchings reveal a much more delicate approach to his subjects than his oil paintings. In this interesting mix of paintings and prints spanning six decades, Starr Figura, the curator, has engineered a fascinating glimpse at the bones behind Freud’s paintings. His first etchings were produced in the 1940’s after which he abandoned the technique for over thirty years, returning to the plates in the 1980’s. In spite of Freud’s use of color in his oil paintings, his subjects are always bleak. For Freud, the hard reality of an image is far more interesting than anything imagined. Etching, a process in which a reverse image is scratched with special needles on copper plates, is a technique that lends itself to Freud’s relentless eye. His vision is as exact and uncompromising as the hairline etches in these black and white prints. The result is powerful and a little disturbing, as though things are being magnified when we asked for no such thing. Freud is foremost a portraitist, and his unerring and often unflattering images speak of the immense depths behind the simplest objects and things. Few contemporary artists can claim the ability to capture a human emotion so precisely and so unflinchingly. His occasional forays into non human subjects show similar ability, whether it is the dense flora of his garden or the exquisite form of his dog, Pluto, which is one of the finest etchings on display.

Self-portrait with Black Eye 

c. 1978

(This self-portrait by Lucian Freud nursing a black eye after a brawl with a taxi driver has sold for £2.8 million at auction)

Lucian Freud's paintings are not easy met up-close and personal, as they mostly found in private collections. People appear to want to keep Freud's work close to them. They are profoundly personal and original images. Freud's viewpoint on the human figures he captures on canvas certainly makes him, in my book, one of the greatest living figurative painters in the world. PS

Girl With a White Dog
 1951-52

 Double Portrait
1985-86


"I paint people not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."
Lucian Freud

"Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid."
Lucian Freud

 Gaz
 1997

"I am only interested in painting the actual person, in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong. "
Lucian Freud

Interior A


 "When I make a painting, I paint as if it is the only painting I am working on.  Or, further, I paint as if it is the only painting that I have ever made.  Or, even further still, I paint as if it is the only painting that anyone ever has made."
- Lucian Freud

 Two Men
  1987-88

Lying by the Rags1989-90

"The paintings that really excite me have an erotic element or side to them irrespective of subject matter. "
Lucian Freud

 The Artist's Daughter and her Husband

 Portrait of Bruce Bernard

'

"The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh."  
Lucian Freud

 

Lucian Freud's paintings are not easy met up-close and personal, as they are mostly found in private collections. People appear to want to keep Freud's work close to them. They are profoundly personal and original images. Freud's viewpoint on the human figures he captures on canvas certainly makes him, in my book, one of the greatest living figurative painters in the world.

Sources

Art News Blog

The Telegraph

WhiteHot Magazine

The Artchive
Brainy Quotes
Transposition Blog
 Web Art Academy


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ABC Wednesday

Three Years

Some days I don't even know who I am and about this, I am quite uncertain. However, I do know that about three years ago, during a particularly mixed bag of ongoing drama (some of it was good), I started a blog. I knew what to call it and why. But I knew little else about how this thing would march forward, for better or for worse.

Three years later, Pagan Sphinx thinks she knows a little bit more about who she is. This could be terrifying but it's also kind of exciting. No confetti thrown, no cake served. Maybe some tambourine shaking and singing. Definitely no human sacrifices.  ;-)  Just a hello and thank you and I love you to those of you who have come here often, some over the three years. Including and especially WP (the future Mr. Pagan Sphinx), The Girls (super, super girls) and CR. 

Love all; trust a few; do wrong to none.
William Shakespeare 

I think that qualifies as the blog's official quote. Now to find room to put it somewhere.  ;-)

It's almost March!!

Much love,
Pagan Sphinx

ABC Wednesday - Z

Z is for Francisco de Zurbarán

                                                     (November 7, 1598 – August 27, 1664)

I think I started my first round of ABC Wednesday somewhere around letter H and the time has flown by so quickly that we are now at Z. Again, my search for an artist whose name begins with the featured letter, netted me one that I was previously unfamiliar with.

I'm not very knowledgeable about religious painters of that period but his work reminds me of  Caravaggio, one of the old masters.  Here are a few paintings chosen by me with no particular knowledge of what exactly is representative of the painter. I like the paintings of the female saints best and being a fan of still life, I chose a couple of those as well.

                                                                          St. Casilda
                                                                         c. 1630-1645

St. Apollonia

The Virgin

ABC Wednesday
join us, won't you?

Shadow Shot Sunday and Today's Flowers

Poetic Shadows in Honor of National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month in the United States. An appreciator of poetry from a young age, I'm weaving the theme through several of my posts all month.

For the last couple of years, I've been making a pilgrimage to The Emily Dickinson Museum. The Homestead and The Evergreens is made up of two historic houses and their three-acre landscape on Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts. Here, the small sphere of existence is preserved  of one of America's most significant poets. The Homestead was the birthplace, in 1830, and home of the Emily Dickinson. The Evergreens, next door, was home to her beloved brother and sister-in-law, Austin and Susan Dickinson, and their three children.

Here are a few photos I took of The Dickinson Homestead and The Evergreens. 

The yellow brick house front door faces south.

If I'm not mistaken the window farthest to the right and the one around the corner are those of the poet's bedroom.

"Where thou art, that is home."

 ~ Emily Dickinson
 

 The sideyard

"My friends are my estate."

~ Emily Dickinson

 The stone path that leads East to Emily's Garden

"How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!"
Emily Dickinson

"The lovely flowers
embarrass me.
They make me regret
I am not a bee..."

"Forever is composed of now."

"Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough"

A path described by Emily Dickinson as “just wide enough for two who love” linked the two Dickinson houses, crossing the lawn from the back door of the Homestead to the east piazza of The Evergreens.
which lies west of the main house.

"The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience." 

side porch of The Evergreens

I'll be back in May or June to see how things are growing then, in Emily's garden.

Shadow Shot Sunday

Today's Flowers

Valentine's Day Fun

Welcome to my blog! There are some changes to the format of The Pagan Sphinx. To make it easier to find older posts, I've put three posts to a page. To find posts older than that, please look for the "older posts" link at the bottom of the three posts. All of the sidebar information, including my blog lists and art resources, can now be found at the bottom of the posts page. Enjoy the larger image format!

This is All My Love

McKenzie Thorpe

Kansas City, Missouri

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I wish I'd been clever enough to discover this on my own, it is such good fun! At biblioklept a literary blog I discovered recently, there was a little fun number on American writer and historian Zora Neale Hurston's love spells, which are contained in her collection Florida Folklore of Mules and Men. Here is one example:

TO MAKE PEOPLE LOVE YOU

Take nine lumps of starch, nine of sugar, nine teaspoons of steel dust. Wet it all with Jockey Club cologne. Take nine pieces of ribbon, blue, red or yellow. Take a dessertspoonful and put it on a piece of ribbon and tie it in a bag. As each fold is gathered together call his name. As you wrap it with yellow thread call his name till you finish. Make nine bags and place them under a rug, behind an armoire, under a step or over a door. They will love you and give you everything they can get. Distance makes no difference. Your mind is talking to his mind and nothing beats that.


One of my favorite quotes of all times was said by Zora Neale Hurston, when she was asked by a journalist how she felt about racial discrimination:


"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It's beyond me."

There you go!

Father Commerce and Other Post-Holiday Ruminations

Did you cherish your holidays and your family this season? Me, I tried really hard and fell short of my expectations that I would be the perfect person for each and every individual in my life.  Any smart person would have given up trying by now to be perfect but I, alas, mistakenly harbor hope that one day I will not piss off a single person for even one moment.  Ha!

 Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it.

~Salvador Dali

There was lots of champagne and good food and beautiful daughters and a loving Old World mother. I decidedly did not receive an iphone from Father Commerce. I find those little gizmos highly distracting. People use their cell phones and other small electronic gadgets while they operate  motor vehicles. If I did that routinely, starting today, I would be dead in three days. Or less. Oh, but I did get a new Canon with a big zoom lens on it. It will be great to be able to photograph birds and the other wildlife around the river and lake. I'm excited.

I think I have a rare form of attention deficit disorder. This is admittedly a self-diagnosis and it may be wacky but I helps me keep my unruly brain in check. Unlike ADHD people, I am often distracted by too much thought - which is really the result of a very long attention span. I don't want to pay attention to too many things at once. I find it overwhelming.  Particularly when it involves driving or operating heavy machinery. For me, a blender constitutes such. I really have to be careful. I also don't understand why so many people don't get that real thinking takes a long time! I'm having this problem with my current instructor. He's way too zippy for me.

I am in a mood. It's not a bad mood, exactly. I just want to tell everyone I love that they should go away from me, please and let me blog. But then, a wonderful thing happens. My daughter SG2, recently turned 21, accepts my invitation to spend the day together yesterday and we click. I took a chance, not altogether sure we would. And we had a wonderful day.. We had a late lunch and then we got our eyebrows waxed. 
I have decided:  one can only eat sushi satisfactorily with another sushi lover.

I promise not to divulge all the eyebrow waxing details. Suffice it to say that I'm very aware of my eyebrows these days. I have been worried that I may frighten people with my shock of white Andy Warhol hair and my jet-black eyebrows. Don't worry. both the eyebrows and the hair remain, and in their respective natural colors. I have merely cleaned up my eyebrows a bit. My daughter approves.  My eyebrows are now more stylish than Warhol's and I hope I'm a tad bit cuter than Andy.

Oh, I got my mother this Christmas and the salt cod!  :-)  And The Runt got some, too!

Pagan Sphinx Warholized

Happy 2010

Be brave and be happy in the new year!

The Gallery

 

Theo Van Rysselberghe

Woman in the Mirror

"When I first saw your gallery, I liked the ones of ladies..."

Joni Mitchell

The Gallery from the album Clouds

 

Joni Mitchell

Self-Portrait

Both Sides Now

  

 Boldini

  

Paul Cezanne

La Dame en Bleu

  

 Mary Cassatt

Woman With Dog

Balthus

The White Skirt

1937

 

 Leighton

Pavonia

  

 Olinsky

 

Whistler

Symphony in White