My Inspiration for January 2020

This January exceeded my expectations by far, what lovely and inspirational weeks these have been. Because it’s cold and grey outside, I tried occupying myself with my hobbies and pursuits instead of wasting time pining for spring and flowers. I started the new year and the new decade with the biography of Dora Maar written by Alicia Dujovne Ortiz; it was a wonderful window into the glamorous and tortured life of this photographer and the muse of Picasso, then I read a romanticised biography of Michelangelo called “Agony and Ecstasy” written by Irving Stone. I am not even a fan of Michelangelo or Renaissance, but Stone beautifully brought the time period and the artist’s feelings to life. I read a few fantastic novels: Hunger by Knut Hamsun, The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark which tells a story of a few schoolgirls in Edinburgh in the 1930s and their wildly romantical, stubborn, idealistic and kind of crazy teacher, Miss Jean Brodie. It made me daydream of the time period and reminisce of my grammar school days. Everything can serve as a springboard for nostalgia. And I am also more than halfway through reading the autobiography of my Hero; Morrissey and it is so wonderfully written, so witty and amusing, so vibrant and sincere… I truly cannot understand why people don’t like him, I never thought sincerity or vegetarianism which he promotes could be a crime?

“She was a romantic, sentimental child, with a preference for solitude, few friends, and a propensity to be moved to tears when the roses in the garden bloomed, when she smelled the rags and soap the nuns used as they bent over their tasks, and when she stayed behind to experience the melancholy stillness of the empty classrooms.”

(Isabel Allende, The House of The Spirits)

John Corbet, Anne writing a letter in winter, 2020, pastel and watercolour. Found here.

Pic found here.

Pic found here.

By: Andrea | dr_difilippo

Lough Key Ireland, by Max Malloy