“What any experimental art is trying to get you to do is move beyond your preconceptions and your expectations regarding what should be happening, what’s going to happen, what kinds of effects it should have, and enter a liminal state in which those things can be redefined in the way that the particular artist or piece of art is proposing.” ― Nathaniel Mackey
“Riches: A dream in the night. "Fame: A gull floating on water.” Chinese Proverb
Venturi and Blue Pinion, 1983
James Rosenquist
"In Venturi and Blue Pinion, a woman is flanked by two machine parts, the venturi (left) and blue pinion (right). A fan of linoleum samples that interrupts the woman's gaze activates the composition and provides a sense of depth. By removing the objects from their original context, Rosenquist suggests that they be read in purely formal or abstract terms. The large scale and hard-edged planes of bright colors in James Rosenquist's painting reflect his early employment as a billboard painter. In the 1960s, Rosenquist established himself as a Pop artist but, while his work displays some characteristics of Pop (industrial paints and use of popular imagery from advertising), his position is ambiguous. Unlike other Pop artists, Rosenquist's imagery has included unexpected, unsettling juxtapositions and disproportionate scale."
“Autumn. It’s crispness, it’s anticipation, it’s melancholia, it’s cool breezes replacing summer’s heat. It’s long days in the field, a harvest festival when work’s done, a cheering crowd in a football stadium, chrysanthemums punctuating a somber landscape. It’s Halloween high-jinx, pumpkins grinning toothy smiles, the crack of pecan pressed against pecan. It’s the first curls of woodsmoke, fresh blisters from pushing a rake. It’s crisp and fresh and mellow and snug, solemn and melancholy. And it’s very, very welcome.” Author: Good Housekeeping Magazine
The Need
Rod McKuen
It’s nice sometimes
to open up the heart a little
and let some hurt come in.
It proves you’re still alive.
If nothing else 
it says to you–
clear as a high hill air,
uncomfortable
as diving through cold water–
I’m here.
However wretchedly I feel,
I feel.
I’m not sure why we cannot shake
the old loves
from our minds.
It must be that
we build on memory
and make them more
than what they were.
And is the manufacture
just a safe device
for closing up the wall?
I do remember.
the only fuzzy circumstance
is sometimes where and how.
Why, I know.
It happens
just because we need
to want and to be
wanted, too,
when love is here or gone
to lie down in the darkness
and listen to the warm.
National World War I Museum and Memorial
“These have dared bear the torches of sacrifice and service.
Their bodies return to dust but their work liveth evermore.
Let us strive on to do all which may achieve and cherish
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Winding Up (1836)
William Sidney Mount
William Sidney Mount was the most highly esteemed painter of American daily life before the Civil War. Using meticulous brushwork, he composed Winding Up similar to a theater set, and the figures mimic stage characters of the day. The man represents Yankee Jonathan, a country-bumpkin type. His hat remains on his head even indoors, and his handkerchief sticks out of his pocket. The woman, however, appears in her finest clothing, which Mount drew from earlier costume sketches. The title Winding Up has a double meaning. It refers to the ball of yarn the woman winds from the skein around her suitor's hands and to the stage of their courtship. The artist, however, leaves it to the viewer to guess the final outcome of the relationship.
“How beautifully leaves grow old. How full of light and color are their last days.”
― John Burroughs
^-^ Cats ^-^
Charles Baudelaire
They are alike, prim scholar and perfervid lover:
When comes the season of decay, they both decide
Upon sweet, husky cats to be the household pride;
Cats choose, like them, to sit, and like them, shudder.
Like partisans of carnal dalliance and science,
They search for silence and the shadowings of dread;
Hell well might harness them as horses for the dead,
If it could bend their native proudness in compliance.
In reverie they emulate the noble mood
Of giant sphinxes stretched in depths of solitude
Who seem to slumber in a never-ending dream;
Within their fertile loins a sparkling magic lies;
Finer than any sand are dusts of gold that gleam,
Vague starpoints, in the mystic iris of their eyes.
Portrait #138 (David Hockney)
Brenda Zlamany
"For many years, Brenda Zlamany has painted portraits of other artists, including Chuck Close, Alex Katz, and David Hockney. She has also been a subject for them; as she puts it, “we are professional posers.” Recently, however, she has worked to paint portraits of those whose gaze is more internal—monks and nomads in Tibet, aboriginal people in Taiwan—creating large bodies of portraits that investigate the limits of the genre. She returned, with her daughter, to Hockney’s studio in 2014, not only to sit for him but to paint him once again. Her practice involves the long sittings and intense looking required of traditional portrait-making. The result captures Hockney’s warmth as well as his intense gaze, surrounded by the energetic foliage of his Los Angeles home."
Maverick Mist 