Art Junkie
Hooter on 30 Jun 2008
- Artists can color the sky red because they know it’s blue. Those of us who aren’t artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we’re stupid.
- Jules Feiffer
US cartoonist & satirist (1929 - )
Archive for June, 2008
No Way
Hooter on 29 Jun 2008
- Some are born who never need them,
Others still who never read them, signs.- Neil Diamond, Signs
US singer & songwriter (1941 - )
fun site
dt on 29 Jun 2008
There are some good videos related to dreaming at videojug.com
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-avoid-bad-dreams
and if you are not into dreaming, there are entertaining card tricks
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-read-someones-mind-with-a-deck-of-cards
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-avoid-bad-dreams
and if you are not into dreaming, there are entertaining card tricks
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-read-someones-mind-with-a-deck-of-cards
Auto Morph
Hooter on 28 Jun 2008
- The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.
- B. F. Skinner
US psychologist (1904 - 1990)
Where does fear reside 2?
dt on 28 Jun 2008
My mother is writing a book on her childhood experiences in WWII. She is also doing a series of paintings to accompany the writing.
The paintings are fascinating. She is a great artist. Most of her works are so realistic that you feel you could reach into them.
But these works are of a totally different style. They are like dream works. She is present in them but detached and unaffected. The scenes are of horrific events, but they are tightly controlled and not frightening. They have the essence of innocence painted by the child she was at the time. It's just very strange, because they are so unlike her previous works. The style reminds me of a painter who does Winter scenes - Moses, only in another universe.
They are painted the way she speaks of the tragedies, without any fear in her voice. She was either never afraid when fire fell from the skies and people close to death grabbed at her arms and legs as she wandered the aftermath, or it is buried and put away. Perhaps the control in the scenes speaks to that. The paintings are illustrations of what occurred, but they won't harm anyone. They won't harm her. I love that.
She wasn't interested at first in doing the artwork. Before she started doing the paintings, I tried to encourage her by drawing one abstract scene and used a very small,specific vantage point. The bomb bursts are twistedly beautiful, as she describes. The fire was out of control as it continued to fall from the sky. You could not see where it began or ended or what the flames held. It threatened. The threat was very close.
My mother's painting covers the entire area, seeing it from beyond. She is far below, sheltered by the metal roof of a well. The planes are overhead and precise. The fire is deliberate, the hills aglow. It's beautiful in rich, deep tones. The fire threatens in a different way. It is the fact that there are more than hundreds of these fire bombs bursting into smaller fire setters falling, too many to stop them all.
Actually, now that I think of it, it reminds me of the spiders again...thousands of baby fires.
Maybe, she is of a stronger ilk, and was not afraid. Her home was on fire. She prayed for a way "in" to the house. And suddenly there was a blanket she had not seen at the edge of the well. She poured water on it and draped it over herself to run in and save her parents' funeral shrine. They had both died years before. She had been given away to an uncle, but was returned shortly after his death just to see her mother die as well from illness. All that was left was the shrine. She said she wasn't afraid. She had to retrieve it.
How can you not be afraid? I "fear" my empathy is misguided when I try to help with the book, because I may imagine, incorrectly, the feelings. I'd imagine fear.
Yet she keeps saying that my writing (working with her on the book) isn't expressing enough of the emotions she felt, and I should know what they were.
I suppose I do...betrayal, despair and resilience. There is much sorrow and a certain amount of resentment to particular individuals. How can I express how much she wanted her mother to show affection towards her? She really swings wildly between hate and love for her. Her mother was abandoned by her family, and she was essentially abandoned by her mother.
Generations go by. I'd have to say our relationship was similar years ago. I felt abandoned. My parents would get angry and I wouldn't hear from them for years. My daughter must have felt abandoned by me in our divorce. Is it a natural part of life or an ongoing disfunction?
Oh well, I suppose that fear resides in me more than my mother. I'll have to remember that when I try to look at things from others' point of view. Obviously, a person has to be careful not to project their own emotion into the view.
The paintings are fascinating. She is a great artist. Most of her works are so realistic that you feel you could reach into them.
But these works are of a totally different style. They are like dream works. She is present in them but detached and unaffected. The scenes are of horrific events, but they are tightly controlled and not frightening. They have the essence of innocence painted by the child she was at the time. It's just very strange, because they are so unlike her previous works. The style reminds me of a painter who does Winter scenes - Moses, only in another universe.
They are painted the way she speaks of the tragedies, without any fear in her voice. She was either never afraid when fire fell from the skies and people close to death grabbed at her arms and legs as she wandered the aftermath, or it is buried and put away. Perhaps the control in the scenes speaks to that. The paintings are illustrations of what occurred, but they won't harm anyone. They won't harm her. I love that.
She wasn't interested at first in doing the artwork. Before she started doing the paintings, I tried to encourage her by drawing one abstract scene and used a very small,specific vantage point. The bomb bursts are twistedly beautiful, as she describes. The fire was out of control as it continued to fall from the sky. You could not see where it began or ended or what the flames held. It threatened. The threat was very close.
My mother's painting covers the entire area, seeing it from beyond. She is far below, sheltered by the metal roof of a well. The planes are overhead and precise. The fire is deliberate, the hills aglow. It's beautiful in rich, deep tones. The fire threatens in a different way. It is the fact that there are more than hundreds of these fire bombs bursting into smaller fire setters falling, too many to stop them all.
Actually, now that I think of it, it reminds me of the spiders again...thousands of baby fires.
Maybe, she is of a stronger ilk, and was not afraid. Her home was on fire. She prayed for a way "in" to the house. And suddenly there was a blanket she had not seen at the edge of the well. She poured water on it and draped it over herself to run in and save her parents' funeral shrine. They had both died years before. She had been given away to an uncle, but was returned shortly after his death just to see her mother die as well from illness. All that was left was the shrine. She said she wasn't afraid. She had to retrieve it.
How can you not be afraid? I "fear" my empathy is misguided when I try to help with the book, because I may imagine, incorrectly, the feelings. I'd imagine fear.
Yet she keeps saying that my writing (working with her on the book) isn't expressing enough of the emotions she felt, and I should know what they were.
I suppose I do...betrayal, despair and resilience. There is much sorrow and a certain amount of resentment to particular individuals. How can I express how much she wanted her mother to show affection towards her? She really swings wildly between hate and love for her. Her mother was abandoned by her family, and she was essentially abandoned by her mother.
Generations go by. I'd have to say our relationship was similar years ago. I felt abandoned. My parents would get angry and I wouldn't hear from them for years. My daughter must have felt abandoned by me in our divorce. Is it a natural part of life or an ongoing disfunction?
Oh well, I suppose that fear resides in me more than my mother. I'll have to remember that when I try to look at things from others' point of view. Obviously, a person has to be careful not to project their own emotion into the view.