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Everything feels so half finished. Even my thoughts are fragmented. Sentences are abandoned for others only barely airborn. I am having problems being In the Moment. Like right now I am worried about how cluttered the house is, my fingernails have paint under them which looks like I've been playing w poo, or if I should go to the park, or what ever happened to the night blooming cereus that was stolen from my stoop years ago when I lived in shanty town. I worry the internet has made my mind as wavering as a weathervane with all this clickery. I worry that society today with its latest scandal lifestyle, its ultra mega convenient super disposable, handy newer newest thing is losing focus and no one takes the time to notice, perfectly. Or they do, briefly before moving on to the next momentarily big thing. Look at all those pronouns. So anyway, huh? (I need to get started on those pork chops for dinner)
Artists, men of learning, and enlightened prelates were fascinated by the robust and bewildering art of Caravaggio, but the negative reaction of church officials reflected the self-protective irritation of academic painters and the instinctive resistance of the more conservative clergy and much of the populace. The more brutal aspects of Caravaggio's paintings were condemned partly because Caravaggio's common people bear no relation to the graceful suppliants popular in much of Counter-Reformation art. They are plain working men, muscular, stubborn, and tenacious.
Caravaggio was a 16th century painter/bar brawler whose realism was celebrated as well as reviled. His painting of a boy with a basket of fruit was so detailed as to impart each leaf's stain, each skin's bruise and flaw.
He went on to glorify freckles like stars, paint harlots as virgins, peasants as noblemen, and retained his naturalist convictions under the pressures of poverty and to the disdain of art scholars. (Netflix is totally fleecing me.) He was a passionate and hot tempered man. He slept with weapons, murdered men in quarrels, fled the law and enemies from city to city, painting by lantern light behind closed shudders, whores and vagrants as royalty. His pieces surfaced in wealthy estates like messages on shore lines.
His paintings now resound for me in a way they never have since I've began reading about his life. I am often so affected by the biographies of artists that their work visually or audibly changes. Hindsight can tarnish or enhance the past depending on what is discovered. I am conflicted as to if an artist's biography should be avoided or sought, integrated or kept separate from the work, like church and state, though both so often influence the other. and as well, each are their own pieces of art. (Should I give up on looking good in boots?)
My latest thing is pretending I am going on a trip far far away. Looking up hotel rates in Verona, Athens or Rio de Janiero. Finding an arresting landscape photograph and following it to the job market, airline tickets, real estate. It's exciting for a moment, the things one can do from bed with the push of a button. (It could be safe to say that across the sea, a ship carries a Lexus to a trophy wife who is making dinner plans at this moment.) (What am I doing with my life?) (Do I have any broccoli?)
Artists, men of learning, and enlightened prelates were fascinated by the robust and bewildering art of Caravaggio, but the negative reaction of church officials reflected the self-protective irritation of academic painters and the instinctive resistance of the more conservative clergy and much of the populace. The more brutal aspects of Caravaggio's paintings were condemned partly because Caravaggio's common people bear no relation to the graceful suppliants popular in much of Counter-Reformation art. They are plain working men, muscular, stubborn, and tenacious.
Caravaggio was a 16th century painter/bar brawler whose realism was celebrated as well as reviled. His painting of a boy with a basket of fruit was so detailed as to impart each leaf's stain, each skin's bruise and flaw.
He went on to glorify freckles like stars, paint harlots as virgins, peasants as noblemen, and retained his naturalist convictions under the pressures of poverty and to the disdain of art scholars. (Netflix is totally fleecing me.) He was a passionate and hot tempered man. He slept with weapons, murdered men in quarrels, fled the law and enemies from city to city, painting by lantern light behind closed shudders, whores and vagrants as royalty. His pieces surfaced in wealthy estates like messages on shore lines.
His paintings now resound for me in a way they never have since I've began reading about his life. I am often so affected by the biographies of artists that their work visually or audibly changes. Hindsight can tarnish or enhance the past depending on what is discovered. I am conflicted as to if an artist's biography should be avoided or sought, integrated or kept separate from the work, like church and state, though both so often influence the other. and as well, each are their own pieces of art. (Should I give up on looking good in boots?)
My latest thing is pretending I am going on a trip far far away. Looking up hotel rates in Verona, Athens or Rio de Janiero. Finding an arresting landscape photograph and following it to the job market, airline tickets, real estate. It's exciting for a moment, the things one can do from bed with the push of a button. (It could be safe to say that across the sea, a ship carries a Lexus to a trophy wife who is making dinner plans at this moment.) (What am I doing with my life?) (Do I have any broccoli?)
