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Deborah J. Brasket

~ Living on the Edge of the Wild

Deborah J. Brasket

Tag Archives: beauty

The Luminous Mindscapes of Shara Hughes

24 Monday Oct 2022

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Nature

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

abstract, art, artists, beauty, fantasy, landscapes, Nature, Paintings, Shara Hughes

“Attraction Contraption” (1921) by Shara Hughes

It’s not surprising I’m drawn to these so-called landscapes by Shara Hughes. They remind me of Matthew Wong’s mysterious mindscapes and Odilon Redon’s poetic paintings, whose work I’ve shared on these pages as well. The real and surreal, the interior and exterior, the symbolic and psychological wrap around and feed each other. You enter places that feel real and dreamlike at the same time. Beautiful and disturbing, fluid and chaotic, lush and luminous.

Her current show “Time Lapsed” at the Kunstmuseum Luzern in Switzerland includes this statement about her work: “These fantasy landscapes satisfy our need for beauty on the one hand, but also arouse a slight uneasiness on the other. The nature depicted seems irrepressible and at times even threatening in its exuberant fullness. Shara Hughes’s landscapes are mood pictures that convey feelings, emotions, or memories.”

Perhaps that’s why they feel familiar, like some otherworldly place I’ve been before—evoking dreams, memories, emotions that wait just below the surface and lure me inward.

“Glow in the Dark” by Shara Hughes
“Just Another Pretty Face” by Shara Hughes
“The Delicate Gloom” by Shara Hughes
“My Violet Lullabye” by Shara Hughes
“My Natural Nycintimasty” by Shara Hughes
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Beauty the Brave, the Exemplary, Bursting Open

24 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by deborahbrasket in Blogging, Nature, Photography, Poetry

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

beauty, bravery, flowers, inspiration, life, Mary Oliver, Nature, Peonies, poetry

White Peony, Jan La Roche Photography

What is it about the fragile, fleeting, and flagrant beauty of flowers that can so break a heart?

I wrote about this once in a photo-essay called Riffing on Roses. And then just this week I found this new-to-me poem by Mary Oliver, Peonies, which broke my heart again.

The poem speaks to the flagrant beauty of flowers that gives itself away, all that it is, so freely and readily to all that comes its way: the ants, the breeze, the sun’s soft buttery fingers, the poet’s breaking heart.

“Beauty the brave, the exemplary,” indeed.

I wish we all could live so bravely, so carelessly, giving all that we are to all there is. I wish we all, like those ants, craving such sweetness and finding it, would bore deep within that sap. We must cherish and adore all we are, all we have, all that is, while it’s still here to have.

Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
   to break my heart
      as the sun rises,
         as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open —
   pools of lace,
      white and pink —
         and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
   into the curls,
      craving the sweet sap,
         taking it away

to their dark, underground cities —
   and all day
      under the shifty wind,
         as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
   and tip their fragrance to the air,
      and rise,
         their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
   gladly and lightly,
      and there it is again —
         beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
   Do you love this world?
      Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
         Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
   and softly,
      and exclaiming of their dearness,
         fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
   their eagerness
      to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
         nothing, forever?

 Mary Oliver,  New And Selected Poems. (Beacon Press; Reprint edition November 19, 2013)

Thank you to The Vale of Soul-Making where I found this poem.

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Rainy Morning Reveries in Photos

02 Sunday Jan 2022

Posted by deborahbrasket in Backyard, Nature, Photography

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

backyard, beauty, California, Central Coast, color, Nature, photography, rain, rainy day

We’ve been blessed with more than usual rainfall on the central coast of California recently. I love the way the gray skies and damp, rain-soaked surfaces around our home make the colors seem more rich and vibrant. The ordinary becomes extraordinary. Wet cement and a shovel can look like abstract art. While fallen tree branches take on the purple glow of a Fauvist painting. Even a little hummer left behind this winter came out to dazzle me with its red-throated splendor. I hope you enjoy these photos as much as I enjoyed taking them.

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Titian in a Venetian Palace in Downtown Boston, Or Lost in Time and Space

01 Monday Nov 2021

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Culture

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

art, beauty, inspiration, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, masterpiece, museum, Paintings, Titian, travel, Venetian palace

That’s how I felt visiting the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum when visiting Boston a few weeks ago.

I went to see a rare collection of eight Titian paintings gathered from around the world. But the Venetian palace that Ms. Gardner built to display her artwork was as fascinating to explore as the Titian masterpieces. It was opened to the public in 1903, a labyrinth of magnificently appointed rooms rising four stories tall and built around a lush, enclosed, garden courtyard.

I was a little piqued at first because none of the painting on display included the names of the artists or paintings, or any information about them, as you usually find in museums. So you were flying blind, guessing whose painting is this, and where did that one come from. Is that amazing Spanish dancer a John Singer Sergeant? It is. And that lovely terrace by Matisse? Right again. But I missed the Rembrandt self-portrait and the Botticelli I got wrong. Some of my favorites turned out to be from artists I was unfamiliar with. Fortunately you can explore her art collection and her rooms on the website.

Still, it was a feast for the eye, not only the paintings but the elaborate furnishings and wall tapestries and carpets. Even murals on ceilings.

It created aa lush and exotic atmosphere in which to experience the artwork. And the way one room wound around another and led to little alcoves and long hallways, pretty soon you felt as disoriented in space as you were in time, and everywhere your gaze fell was some extraordinary painting or sculpture to arrest your attention.

The final room I viewed was where the Titians were collected and I spent quite a bit of time just allowing myself to absorb them. The title of the Collection is: Women, Myth, and Power. I may have more to say about these works later, but for now, here is what the Museum has to say:

“Between 1551 and 1562, Titian created a series of monumental paintings for King Philip II of Spain. Celebrated as landmarks of western painting, the six poesie — or painted poetries — envision epic stories from classical Antiquity. Titian reimagined these familiar tales and used his modern style of painting to shape the future of western art. For the first time in over four centuries, Isabella Stewart Gardner’s fully restored Rape of Europa is reunited with its five illustrious companions in the exhibition’s finale and its only American venue on an international tour including to the National Gallery, London and the Museo del Prado, Madrid. This exhibition explores each painting’s story, its drama, raw emotion, and complex consequences illustrated in each painting, reconsidering what the poesie meant in their own time and how they resonate now. Newly commissioned responses by contemporary artists and scholars engage with questions of gender, power, and sexual violence as relevant today as they were in the Renaissance.”

Adding to the mystery and allure of Ms. Gardner’s museum is the famous art heist that took place in 1990. Thirteen pieces worth $500 million were cut out of their frames by two men posing as police officers. None of the work has been recovered, including Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee (1633), his only only known seascape. The empty frames are still on display.

If you love art and are in Boston, don’t miss this treasure. It’s a feast for the senses.

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In Defense of Joy

13 Sunday Jun 2021

Posted by deborahbrasket in Poetry, Spirituality

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

beauty, delight, inspiration, Jack Gilbert, Joy, life, Philosophy, poetry, spirituality, Zen

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Jack Gilbert, from “A Brief for the Defense“

The title of this poem is so interesting. How sometimes we feel we must defend our pleasures, our moments of delight, in the face of so much suffering in the world.

Finding the balance between wanting to save the world (as if I could) and wanting to lay all that aside and just savor it while I can, has been a lasting theme in my life.

More and more I’m tending toward the latter.

My favorite treatise on the subject is the tale of the Zen monk being chased over a cliff by a tiger. He grabs hold of a vine to keep from falling, while a hungry alligator snaps at his heels in the river below. Just then, he spies a juicy red strawberry hanging nearby. He reaches out with one hand to pop it into his mouth.

“Oh, so delicious!” he sighs.

As do I.

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A Magical Day at San Simeon Bay

28 Sunday Feb 2021

Posted by deborahbrasket in Nature, travel

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

beach, beauty, California, Central Coast, coastline, hiking, Nature, sailing, San Simeon, San Simeon State Park, travel

Dale and I spent a magical day recently at San Simeon Bay along Highway 1, just below Hearst Castle on the California central coast. Quite unexpectedly, we found two sailboats rolling gently in the bay and three elephant seals lulling in the sun. Something we’ve never seen here before. Although elephant seals are found abundantly in this area, it’s unusual to find them on busy beaches. Signs warned us to beware, as these wild creatures can bite should they be disturbed.

One of the boats looked like La Gitana, the 46-foot sailboat that was our home for six years when we sailed around the world. Nostalgia for that magic time hit heavy. I almost felt like I could see our son at the bow with his fishing line thrown into the bay, our daughter riding the boom as she liked to do, and Dale and I sitting on the aft deck with two big green buckets and a wooden plunger, doing laundry.

Further up the beach was a quaint hut made of driftwood that some surfer had built. Like ones we often saw on remote beaches built by yachties when we were sailing.

Along the way as we hiked up the bluff and out to the point, we stopped to visit the largest eucalyptus trees we’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, with their rainbow bark, elephantine trunks and long octopus arms. Magical!

When we reached the point, we could look back at the bay and get a faraway glimpse of Hearst Castle high in the hills, another magical place. On the other side were beautiful views of the coastline.

The last time we came here we headed back after reaching the point, but this time we turned north to a path lined by pine and eucalyptus trees that parallels the coast.

The path grew narrower and darker and spookier as we walked, the trees thicker and more gnarled, blocking out the sun. Sharp branches reached out to grab and tree roots rose up to trip. On one side we could hear the hidden ocean waves whispering warnings to us, while all around the creepy creaks and groans of trees sent cold shivers down our spines. It seemed to go on forever. We could almost imagine ourselves as Hansel and Gretel lost in the stark, dark woods just before reaching the witches gingerbread house. Our path eventually opened up to a sun-filled view of the coastline stretching out as far as we could see, with the very faint outline of the Piedras Blancas Lighthouse in the far misty distance.

On the hike back to the beach we came across a strange trail of dark, oily splats along the path, as if dropped from some huge creature flying by. Dragon shit, we surmised, looking up as if to see the dark shadow of reptile wings wheeling by. A fair and fitting end to our magical day at San Simeon.

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Still Open to the Beauty of the World

01 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, books, Fiction, Nature, Spirituality

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

beauty, books, faith, fiction, literature, Paul Harding, quotations, quote, Tinkers, Winter

Winter Landscape by Carol Collette

“Your cold mornings are filled with the heartache about the fact that although we are not at ease in this world, it is all we have, that it is ours but that it is full of strife, so that all we can call our own is strife; but even that is better than nothing at all, isn’t it?

And as you split the frost-laced wood with numb hands, rejoice that your uncertainty is God’s will and His grace toward you that that is beautiful, and a part of a greater certainty, as your own father always said in his sermons and to you at home.

And as the ax bites into the wood, be comforted in the fact that the ache in your heart and the confusion in your soul means that you are still alive, still human, and still open to the beauty of the world, even though you have done nothing to deserve it.

And when you resent the ache in your heart, remember: You will be dead and buried soon enough.” ― Paul Harding, Tinkers. (Bellevue Literary Press January 1, 2009) Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2010

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Exploring the Deer Paths Behind My Home

04 Friday Dec 2020

Posted by deborahbrasket in Backyard, Nature, Oak Trees, Photography, Wild Life

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

beauty, deer paths, hiking, Nature, nature walk, oak trees, photography

I spent a lovely morning recently exploring some of the deer paths behind our home, stopping to take photos along the way. It’s steeper than it looks here, but the deer know the best way to travel this terrain. And the lovely walking stick my husband made me with it’s sailor stitching and nubby knobs helped.

I love these oak trees, the curving branches with their rough bark and soft grassy moss, the dripping branches with their lacy ribbons. The way the sun peeks through . . .

The backlit branches spiking the sky. The tiny twigs curling like calligraphy against the deep blue.

The deer paths led me through sun-dappled glades . . .

. . . and pass the graveyards of dying and fallen giants, their bare bones scattered and broken along the way. Enriching the soil and nurturing new growth.

As I headed home again I passed the gopher ghetto that edges our property, a space my husband keeps clear of growth as a firebreak. These greedy, prolific creatures gobbled up the roots of several of our favorite rose bushes this year. But the bevy of quail that live here love this cleared space to scratch and feed. And they use the holes as bathtubs, wriggling their fat little bodies deep down into the tiny tubs and splashing the loosened dirt over their shoulders with their wings.

Home at last, I end this journey where I began, with this gorgeous red plum tree the marks one corner of our property.

And a postscript pleasure just for you: this beautiful buck who took a nap in our front yard not long ago. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so much beauty and wildlife.

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What Makes this Photo So Fascinating?

07 Sunday Apr 2019

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Culture, Photography

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

art, art criticism, beauty, fine art photography, inspiration, photography, Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier (1926-2009)

What makes a photograph great? What draws us to look again and again? What is it we see that fascinates us so?

These are the kinds of questions that haunt me, because they speak to the human condition, what makes us human, what inspires us and sets us on fire. Why we are drawn to some things, why do they whisper to us in a way that makes us feel that as if we could only ferret this out we will have drawn aside some mysterious veil that hides the secrets of our soul from us.

I want to get to the bottom of these things, to understand what excites me and why–in art, in music, in literature, in the simple objects that I find in my house that give me such pleasure when I look at them, take them in.

Where does this pleasure come from? Why am I drawn to look deep inside this mirror?

The photograph above by Vivian Maier fascinates me. Her story is fascinating as well. Maier is considered one of the finest photographers of our age, yet she was unknown in her lifetime. Her photographs of city life, thousands of them, were found after her death, as negatives, never developed, never printed. Yet it’s not her story that draws me to this photo. It stands by itself as an object of art, a moment forever stilled in time for our rapt attention.

I suppose what first captures the eye is the stunning beauty of the woman, like an Aphrodite of old captured in stone. We are drawn toward beautiful things, no matter what their nature: a woman, a man, a child, a sunset, a spectacular cathedral.

But there is so much more to this photo that captures and holds our gaze, that makes it exciting and evocative and a pleasure to look at, than the mere beauty of the woman’s face. There’s also the expression on her face, the sideways glance, the downward gaze, the dark arching eyebrows and melancholy mouth. Those eyes. There’s a mysterious Mona Lisa appeal that makes us look with wonder at her: who is she, what is she thinking, where is she going? We have some clues, and these too comprise in part what makes this photo so fascinating.

Behind her is an imposing edifice slightly out of focus, a courthouse I’m guessing, with steps leading down to the street, as if she has just vacated that space.  The strong central column leads directly to her, the soft pale gray stone in direct contrast with her shining dark hair. While the sharper, horizontal lines of the near stairs behind her also point provocatively toward her. She is caught at the apex of their meeting.

Surrounding her (almost like a parenthesis to enhance her significance) are the elderly women moving past and leaning toward her with their bent backs and grey heads. They too are slightly out of focus. Passersby in motion contrasting with her stark startling stillness.

Below her is a streak of white, slantwise and mysterious, a ghostly blur. It appears she is standing in the middle of the street, or perhaps on the curb, and the photographer is viewing her from the open window of a passing vehicle. That blur, that streak of passing time across her breast, of swift motion, contrasts sharply with her stillness and the sharp, clean details that freeze her in time: The pearl necklace and earring; the wings of her wide collar framing her face; the sharp, delicate sculpture of her collar bones; the dark hollow of her throat and gentle curve of her jaw; the feathering of the dark eyelash silhouetted against the white stone behind her.

She is a study of stillness against the motion that surrounds her, and without that surrounding motion, without all those revealing contrasts and details, she would not appear so alluring, nor would this photograph be so fascinating. Without all the lines leading toward her, framing her, setting her apart from all else; without her face being set like a polished diamond within the gray softness surrounding her; without that stunning stillness caught within a blur of motion, like a second in time frozen for all eternity, this photograph would lose its fascination. For me at least.

There’s poetry in this photograph, rhythm, rhyme, music. It speaks profoundly on the eternal nature of beauty and its fragility within a timescape that erases the very thing it  evolves. Keats’ Ode to a Grecian Urn, Shelley’s Hymn to Beauty speak no more eloquently to that theme than this single image does.

There’s tenderness here, love, compassion, heartbreak and pathos, as well as a beauty beyond knowing, beyond time. Something we feel deeply and speaks movingly to what it means to be human shrouded in so much mystery. And that’s what I find so fascinating. How a single image, flashed on the fly, can capture all that.

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Pied Beauty, Poem & Paintings

19 Monday Nov 2018

Posted by deborahbrasket in Art, Nature, Poetry

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

art, artists, beauty, Gerard Manley Hopkins, inspiration, music, Nature, Paintings, Pied Beauty, poetry

Wassily Kandinsky, Waterfall II, 1902. Saw an exhibition in Washington DC, he is one of my favorites!

Wassily Kandinsky, Waterfall II

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

What is it about “dappled” things that so dazzles us?

I ran across this poem, a favorite of mine, not long ago, and was reminded once again of how much nature inspires and excites us. Painters as well as poets have been praising that pied beauty through their artwork down the ages.

A few of my favorite paintings praising dappled things follows.

Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889. Oil on canvas, 73 × 93.4 cm / 28¾ × 36¾ in Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. As reproduced in Art in Time.

Vincent Van Gogh

The Athenaeum - Study of Salmon (John Singer Sargent - )

John Singer Sargeant

Sargent

John Singer Sargeant

John Singer Sargeant

'John Singer Sargent Watercolors' Presents 93 Works From Painter's Lesser Known Medium (PHOTOS) | HuffPost

John Singer Sargeant

Gertrude Fiske (1878-1961) American Impressionist Painter ~ Blog of an Art Admirer

Gertrude Fiske

Anne Redpath OBE (1895–1967) was a Scottish artist whose vivid domestic still lifes are among her best-known works. Redpath's father was a tweed designer in the Scottish Borders. She saw a connection between his use of colour and her own.

Anne Redpath

Immersed  | oil on canvas | 54 x 36

Rick Stevens, Immersed

Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt

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  • Living in the Liminal—Permeable and Transparent
  • Between Dusk and Dawn a New Year Appears to Appear
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  • “Catching Every Falling Cup” – A Primal Urge
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Purpose of Blog

After sailing around the world in a small boat for six years, I came to appreciate how tiny and insignificant we humans appear in our natural and untamed surroundings, living always on the edge of the wild, into which we are embedded even while being that thing which sets us apart. Now living again on the edge of the wild in a home that borders a nature preserve, I am re-exploring what it means to be human in a more than human world.

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