Making a Present of the past

It’s a long time since I posted any jewelry or artifacts posts on here.  The inspiration today for this post came from a piece I have just written on Bookstains, in celebration of the Poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow‘s birthday.  This video by Native American artist Harold Alfred Kwakwaka’wakw caught my eye.    This Canadian artist was born into the Namgis tribe

Musings

The purpose of the artist’s Muse is manifold.  That elusive being who showers  inspiration on man and bathes in the glory of the artists recreation.  The Pre Raphaelites had an eye for these beautiful women and celebrated their beauty with paint – if not always by deed (you know who you are Mr Rossetti).  I came across this video

Grant Wood – Happy Birthday!

It’s American Regionalist artist Grant Wood’s birthday today.  As I have already celebrated this artist’s birthday (see this post) and wrote about him at some length, I thought it might be interesting to look at more of the artist’s most famous work – American Gothic.  Grant Wood was born on this day in Anamosa Iowa

Facing the Paint

Face painting has been around for thousands and thousands of years.  It has been used as camouflage, used in battle to frighten the opposition, sports and used at funfairs and circus’ and religious ritual and spiritual purposes.  Indeed, the’greasepaint’, the ‘slap’ and the ‘face’ still goes on (and on our faces).  In the 1960’s ‘hippies’, the ‘flower children’ used to

Behind the paint ‘A Tale of Two Chairs’

I’ve just put a poem on my other blog Bookstains, using Vincent Van Gogh‘s very famous chair to illustrate it.  A recent (virtual) trip to the Van Gogh Museum (see this post) gave me the opportunity of seeing his paintings up close.  I have seen Van Gogh’s chair before in The National Gallery London –

A Room (or two) with quite a view (or two)

Google has just launched their new Google Art project today (link at the bottom of post) and it’s rather exciting!  Now you can visit 17 famous art galleries around the world – without leaving your home!  Using the same technology as Google Street Maps you can ‘walk’ round the rooms of the buildings and zoom