Bittersweet ~

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 8, 2018
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Photography, Poetry. Tagged: , , , , , , .

BITTERSWEET
Rumi

In my hallucination
I saw my beloved’s flower garden
In my vertigo, in my dizziness
In my drunken haze
Whirling and dancing like a spinning wheel

I saw myself as the source of existence
I was there in the beginning
And I was the spirit of love
Now I am sober
There is only the hangover
And the memory of love
And only the sorrow

I yearn for happiness
I ask for help
I want mercy
And my love says:

Look at me and hear me
Because I am here
Just for that

I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl

I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To love you
To nourish you

Oh sweet bitterness
I will soothe you and heal you
I will bring you roses
I, too, have been covered with thorns

🌹

Chestnut Grove

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 6, 2018
Posted in: Art, Music, Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , .

Chestnut Grove at Louveciennes
(Bois de châtaigniers à Louveciennes)
Camille Pissarro
Oil on canvas (1872)

"Pissarro lived at Louveciennes, a suburb to the southwest of Paris, from 1869 to 1872. His work from this period is characterized by an intense interest in shadow and structure. In this painting, the diagonal of a battered trunk interrupts the verticals of the other trees while strong lines of shadow animate the ground. In the distance in the center is part of the aqueduct of Marly that originally transported water from the river Seine to the royal gardens at Versailles.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), Pissarro fled to England. The studio he left behind at Louveciennes was used as quarters for Prussian soldiers, who destroyed large numbers of his pictures."

🎨

WPC: Smile

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 5, 2018
Posted in: Music, Photography, Poetry, Weekly Photo Challenge. Tagged: , , , , , , .

The Power of a Smile
by Tupac Shakur

The power of a gun can kill
and the power of fire can burn
the power of wind can chill
and the power of a mind can learn
the power of anger can rage
inside until it tears u apart
but the power of a smile
especially yours can heal a frozen heart


Weekly Photo Challenge: Smile

Portrait of Richard Gallo

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 4, 2018
Posted in: Art, Music, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Portrait of Richard Gallo
Gustave Caillebotte
Oil on canvas (1881)

Richard Gallo, a close friend of Gustave Caillebotte and editor of the liberal newspaper Le Constitutionnel, is shown with his arms folded defiantly across his chest and a copy of the conservative rival paper, Le Figaro, on his lap. Caillebotte developed a distinctive style characterized by spatial distortions that often suggest the mood or psychology of his subjects.

Depictions of modern Parisian life, whether on the streets or inside middle-class homes, dominated Caillebotte’s paintings of the 1870s and early 1880s.

🔸

Under the Orange Tree

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 3, 2018
Posted in: Art, Music, Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Under the Orange Tree
Berthe Morisot
Oil on canvas (1889)

Berthe Morisot was a leading and dedicated member of the Impressionists, whose professional artist association was the first to admit women and men equally. As a wealthy middle-class woman, she was not able to access the spaces of urban modernity, such as concert cafés and dance halls, that men often depicted. Her paintings thus reflect the feminine, often domestic sphere to which she was confined.

Here, her daughter Julie sits in the garden of Morisot’s winter home in the south of France, near brightly rendered orange trees and a parrot in a birdcage.

🍊

Women at Sunrise

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 2, 2018
Posted in: Art, Music, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Women at Sunrise
Joan Miró
Oil on canvas (1946)

Imaginative figures wearing triangular black skirts float in space in this little painting. Like other Surrealist artists, Joan Miró sought to express a reality that was above and beyond the conventional realm. Toward that end, he experimented with "pure psychic automatism," a form of doodling without the intervention of rational thought. Miró was further inspired by the art of children and the Altamira cave paintings in northern Spain.

🔸

The Easter Flower

Posted by Maverick ~ on April 1, 2018
Posted in: Flowers, Music, Nature, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , .

The Easter Flower

by Claude McKay

Far from this foreign Easter damp and chilly
My soul steals to a pear-shaped plot of ground,
Where gleamed the lilac-tinted Easter lily
Soft-scented in the air for yards around; 

Alone, without a hint of guardian leaf!
Just like a fragile bell of silver rime,
It burst the tomb for freedom sweet and brief
In the young pregnant year at Easter-time; 

And many thought it was a sacred sign,
And some called it the resurrection flower;
And I, a pagan, worshiped at its shrine,
Yielding my heart unto its perfumed power.

🐇

Mill at Limetz

Posted by Maverick ~ on March 31, 2018
Posted in: Art, Music, Photography. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Mill at Limetz
Claude Monet
Oil on canvas (1888)

Over the course of his long career, Claude Monet gradually shifted his attention from urban subjects and focused increasingly on capturing the effects of light on water, whether rivers, the ocean, or his famous water lily pond. Mill at Limetz is a dazzling example of his later style, characterized by dense applications of paint. Here, fleeting reflections on the river’s surface are transformed into a thickly woven tapestry of luminous color.

🍃

Die drei Pierrots No. 2

Posted by Maverick ~ on March 30, 2018
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Die drei Pierrots Nr. 2 (The Three Pierrots No. 2)
Albert Bloch
American, 1882-1961
Oil on canvas (1911)

"Die drei Pierrots Nr. 2 features pantomime figures from the commedia dell'arte, a style of improvisational comedic theater developed in 16th- and 17th-century Italy. Aspiring to evoke a range of emotional states, Albert Bloch superimposed three images of Pierrot, an outsider character in the commedia, with whom many modern artists identified. By reducing the figures to abstract shapes and layering their forms against a colorful abstract background, Bloch created an especially dynamic composition.

St. Louis native Albert Bloch spent more than a decade in Germany beginning in 1908. In Munich in 1911, he was the only American invited to participate in the first exhibition of the avant-garde Blue Rider group. Die drei Pierrots Nr. 2 was one of Bloch's six entries."

🎈