My Inspiration for July 2022

This July I was into the Rust Belt, mostly through reading Anne Trubek’s collection of essay by different authors called “Voices from the Rust Belt” and Springsteen’s songs, floral print facades, horror films such as “It” (2017), “Creep” (2014) and “It Follows” (2014) and novels such as Stephen King’s Pet Sematary which I found particularly fascinating, the idea behind it especially, Charles Burchfield’s watercolour of strange, creepy buildings, Emil Nolde’s paintings of vibrant flowers, Edward Hopper’s paintings of lonely streets, acoustic version of the song “Joey” by Concrete Blonde which is very emotional, passionate and raw. I read two fascinating books that give a great analysis and commentary on the situation in the modern western world regarding GenZ especially; “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious by Jean M. Twenge and “I find that offensive” by Claire Fox.

“I am solitary as grass.
What is it I miss?
Shall I ever find it, whatever it is?”
(Sylvia Plath)

“It’s funny. I used to daydream about being old enough to go out on dates, driving around with my friends in their cars. I had this image of myself, holding hands with a really cute guy, listening to the radio, driving along some pretty road, up north maybe, and the trees start to change colors. It was never about going anywhere really. Just having some sort of freedom I guess. Now that we’re old enough, where the hell do we go?”
-It Follows (2014)

Romeo and Juliet mural, Shoreditch

This mural marks the site of original Shakespearean theatre and where Romeo and Juliet was first performed. It is unlike the typical street art found in Shoreditch, plenty of examples of which can be found on London Edge.

Thomasin McKenzie on set of ‘Last Night in Soho’. Photo by Greg Williams.

Little Castle by Martin
Via Flickr:
Loenen (NL)

Sarah Loven Photography

ig @labohemejulia.

Flower Valley in Himalaya by Samiran Sarkar, found here.

Instagram by elise.buch

Photo by Tom Leighton.

“Storm and Forest” by Samiran Sarkar.

Runaway Bride, Isabeli Fontana by Peter Lindbergh for Vogue Paris April 2012

My Inspiration for November 2021

Never has a month so utterly miserable and gloomy given me the gift of discovering such beautiful poetry. I have shared some of it on the blog throughout the month, as you may have seen. Words of poetry, full of beauty and meaning, and music that spoke to my heart made me rise again like a phoenix from the ashes of despair. It’s wonderful how Beauty (and Love…) can wash away the sadness of life… This month I really enjoyed gazing at paintings by the Polish painter Teodor Axentowicz and Stanislaw Wyspianski, and also I have a freshly awoken love for James Tissot, a genre painter whose elegant paintings I use to love a lot. I also enjoyed a lot of autumnal themed paintings as you will see bellow. Bye bye November and hello December!

“Have you ever thought, right… I mean, you don’t know…but you might already have had the happiest moment in your whole fucking life…and all you’ve got to look forward to is sickness and purgatory?” (Johnny’s quote from the film “Naked”, 1993)

“But let your statement ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Anything more than these comes from evil.”
(Matthew 5:37)

“The embrace of poetry,
Like love’s impossible, perfect fit,
Defends while it lasts
Against all the misery of the world.”
(Andre Breton, The Road to San Romano )

The grounds of Gwydir Castle near to Llanrwst, County Conwy, in North Wales. Artist: Ben Abel.

Picture: よりそう by Kaz Kaz

Picture: Untitled by Théo Gosselin

Picture found here.

Picture by elise.buch (instagram)

Burg Hanstein, instagram.

Two pictures above by: darya darcy (instagram).

Instagram: elise.buch.

Marz Doerflinger (American, b. CA, USA, based Olympia, WA, USA) – Waiting for the Chinook, Paintings: Pastel

Picture found here.

By Xing Jianjian.

Picture found here.

Picture found here.

Picture By takikropka.

Two pictures above by: Ellen Tyn (@liskin_dol).

Instagram: sofie.in.wonderland.

Crescent Moon Crimson Sky

Life and death or the creeping shadow. 1873. Illustrated title page.

Kusakabe Kimbei (1841-1934) – Chrysanthemum

Picture found here.

Autochrome photo of flowers made by unknown French photographer, 1910s.

My Inspiration for September 2020

This was a very romantic month for me, and I don’t just mean the feeling of being in love, but that “romantic aesthetic”; roses and candles, sounds of Tindersticks and Nick Cave in dusk of a dying day, enjoying every moment passionately because I am aware that summer is dead and sunny days are no more. The air is laced with a certain sadness and a sense of transience which fuels nostalgic thoughts. It’s time of the year for Romanticism, Rilke, Poe and Pre-Raphaelites. This month I read two books by Charles Bukowski in a row and they both equally amused me: “Post-Office” and “Factotum”, I also read Bret Easton Ellis’ novel “Imperial Bedrooms” which is a sequel for his debut novel “Less Than Zero”, I found it equally as disturbing as “Less Than Zero”. I also read a book about animal rights called “Impeachment of Man” by Savitri Devi which chimed with my thoughts well and it gave me great joy to read my thoughts on paper. I try to shut myself from the stupidity of the world and “cultivate my own garden”, as Voltaire suggested, and oh my, what beautiful, fragrant flowers can bloom when we don’t allow the outside world to poison us!

“A wild longing for strong emotions and sensations seethes in me, a rage against this toneless, flat, normal and sterile life. I have a mad impulse to smash something, a warehouse, perhaps, or a cathedral, or myself.”

(Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf)

Picture found here.

제목 없음 by vikkyivie on Flickr.

Picture found here.

Photo by Laura Makabresku

By Clémentine Circaetis / (surreal blog)

Yuliyart

Back Yard

Picture found here.

By ischta__

Boris Grigoriev – The Model

“You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life.”

(Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch)

Boris Grigoriev, The Model, 1926

I discovered this gem of a painting a few days ago and I knew it was something special that I needed to devote a post to. This painting by the Russian painter Boris Grigoriev is titled simply “The Model”, but if you really take a look at the girl who is posing for the artist, you can see how much uniqueness and character there is to her. In particular it is her face expression that I just cannot get out of my mind! Her round doll-like face is framed with a stylish black hat and thick, short yellow hair which looks like it was made of straw. Her blushing cheeks are like two bright, blooming red poppies, and that vibrant vivacious red colour matched that of her shirt. Grigoriev uses a limited colour palette, but the contrasts and shades make this artwork exquisite. The girl’s slightly pointed little nose, lips pressed together and that gaze of her blue eyes – oh that gaze! – speak so much of her character and feelings. Her gaze shows defiance and rebellion, but the blushing cheeks reveal a lot too. It seems that she is secretly embarrassed but decided to hide her gentler emotions under the coat of arrogance and toughness. Her blue eyes are large and doll-like, her gaze protruding and her pouting lips pressed together in silence. It certainly makes me wonder of what went on between the painter and the girl during the time she posed for him. Perhaps he joked about something and she didn’t find it funny, or perhaps he asked her to pose in a way she didn’t particularly wanted to. I just love the contrast of the girlish and womanly elements in her; her face is round and her cheeks red as if she were a doll, she is sulking and pouting like a little girl who didn’t get something she wanted, and yet her figure is feminine and not childlike.

Boris Grigoriev was born in Moscow in 1886. His father was a banker, and his mother had a fondness for literature, music and art, which may have influenced the young Grigoriev as well. A fellow Russian artist of the time, Alexandre Benois, said of Grigoriev “How can one not call his quick but perceptive manner wonderful? How can one fail to admire the courage of his colourful contrasts, which are always harmonious, and with all the beautiful and bold combinations?” Looking at this painting, we can see how true Benois’ words are. Grigoriev uses limited colours, earthy, coppery, sensuous shades, but the overall result is a harmony of colour contrasts that is at once vibrant and soothing to the eyes. Grigoriev traveled a lot, and from 1921 to 1926 he spent his summers in Brittany where he, like many before him, enjoyed in the treasures of archaic villages, fashion and customs of the locals, the world still untouched by the modernity.

Since “The Model” was painted in 1926, perhaps Grigoriev painted it whilst in Brittany. Though maybe she is too modern for Brittany, maybe she is the child of Parisian boulevards. Regardless of whether he painted poor peasants in Russian or hookers in Marseilles, Grigoriev never romanticised his models; his approach was sincere and unique, he preferred to capture their characters and realness of their faces. The poppy-cheeked girl here is pretty, but she doesn’t seem the least bit idolised. Even from an early age Grigoriev saw himself as a loner and an individual. He chose not to be strongly connected to a specific art movement, but walk his own path and explore. Still, he cited the works of Van Gogh, Cézanne and André Derain as his inspiration, and indeed, in “The Model” I can see how Cézanne might have been his inspiration. The girl’s limbs, her legs particularly, look somehow geometrical, as if she were a wooden doll. As much as the shapes here are reminiscent of Cézanne, the warm, rich colours and the mood are sensuous and lively.

To connect this post with the quote I cited in the beginning, I have to say that this painting is something that I will not forget soon, the girl’s lovely, sulking, rosy-cheeked face is something that will linger in my mind and stay there forever.

Wa and Qi Lolita Styles

These days my senses are ravished by dreams of the East; moss gardens, glowing lanterns and cherry blossom petals carried by the soft spring breeze, exciting Ukiyo-e prints, strange and thrilling music of Toru Takemitsu, old haiku poems… To go along with the theme, of course these gorgeous Lolita dresses caught my attention because they combine the classical Lolita clothes elements; silhouette, cuteness and modest appeal, with the elements of traditional clothes. Wa Lolita is a style of Lolita that combines the classic Lolita style with elements of traditional Japanese clothing (kimono), and Qi Lolita is a very similar style which takes inspiration from the traditional Chinese clothing (qipeo). I love the diversity that Lolita style is capable of and these eye-candy dresses bellow are just a joy to look at, I love the colour palette, lots of red and purple, the intricate patterns, and I love that the head-wear and the accessorize are also inspired by the traditional styles, it just looks stunning all together.

Most pictures found here.

Haunting Melancholy Dolls by Mari Shimizu

“She’s got the whole dark forest living inside of her.”

(Tom Waits)

Some time ago I discovered these gorgeous dolls made by a Japanese artist Mari Shimizu, and I was instantly drawn to their beautiful pale haunting faces, large eyes radiating melancholy and rosebud lips which hide secrets. Mari Shimizu has been creating these dolls for almost twenty years now, having started in 2000, and she is entirely self-taught. The detailing and the inspiration that went into creating each doll individually is baffling! They are all unique and yet they all seem to belong to this one world; half-fantasy and half-macabre. As I gaze at each doll, it seems to me that their eyes, shiny and large like gemstones, jade or sapphire, are gateways to this other world, that of the imagination.

Some of them are inspired by Alice in Wonderland, some are vampire-like, with delicious little fangs and faded lavender coloured Rococo-style gowns, others are skeletons with rich inner lives, and I mean literary so; their insides, instead of organs, have a whole other vivid crazy world inside them; nude maiden riding a horse of Fuseli-inspired fantasy, anything goes. Mari Shimizu wasn’t into the whole pink, sugary, kawaii aesthetic that Japan is famous for (that isn’t the only aspect of Japanese culture, I know, but it seems a lot of foreigners are drawn to the cuteness and childlike stuff that Japan offers, from mangas to Lolita clothes).

Her imagination wanted to go to greater depths and greater lengths, and looking at these dolls you can notice a whole scale of inspiration that went into it, from Western art and fairy tales and stories, and she said in an interview here that she especially likes Renaissance and Victorian eras which would explain some of the themes behind these dolls, Death and the Maiden, a popular motif in the Middle ages and the Renaissance, and Alice in Wonderland: “Alice in Wonderland is fascinated by being an absurd drama with a girl as the main character, depicted in an era when human activities are automated in the industrial revolution. I interpret that the innocent and pure existence of a girl is a story that fights adult absurdity over time. Human emotions and growth are inherently absurd.  It is animals and nature that tell us the truth, not formulas.  Alice in Wonderland is drawn through the eyes of a girl whose world is still undifferentiated, and she can listen to animal conversations and freely change the size and presence of objects.  It is a theme that always has new discoveries that break our fixed concept.” (in the artist’s own words)

Henri Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1791

My Inspiration for November 2019

Two things on my mind these days are for sure two wonderful but very different films; “What We Do in the Shadows” (2014) which was so hysterical and funny and also very educational because it offers a rare insight into the life of vampires, and “Desperately Seeking Susan” (1985) with Madonna and Rosanna Arquette which was so groovy and exciting and I loved looking at the fun fashions in vibrant colours. I also watched another vampire film, recommended to me by someone, “The Lost Boys” (1987) and really enjoyed it, the soundtrack as well, with INXS and Echo and the Bunnymen’s version of The Doors’s song “People are Strange”. I read the Gothic gem, Horace Walpole’s novel “Castle of Otranto” and I enjoyed it so much; the drama, the villains and innocent maidens, deaths, secrets passages, murders and love… all that one could want in a novel. And I started rereading Jane Eyre and once again I am swooning over their romance!

“I was never young. This idea of fun: cars, girls, saturday night, bottle of wine… to me, these things are morbid. I was always attracted to people with the same problems as me. It doesn’t help when most of them are dead.” (Morrissey)

Art by Torii Tsubaki

Beautiful as you, by Milamai

Found here.

Tonight the sky is red ✨(by Milamai)

Nesting for Autumn by *Nishe on Flickr.

Victorian Dream Rose ~ vip_roses

My Inspiration for September 2019

This September seemed to have lasted a century, and not thirty days… I love this time of the year, these late summer and now early autumn days; days of changes, days of last sunny afternoon and last roses, days when I feel the transience and fragility of everything, when I sense the beauty around me the most with a certain calmness and more quiet joy, and most of all, I see these autumnal days as time to let go of negative things and embrace the new, a time of gratitude and a time to gather strength from the richness and ripeness of nature, the chestnuts, the yellow and red leaves, the apples, and prepare slowly for the silent sombre days which are upon us. Because I feel this way, Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and letters are a source of inspiration for me, they are a comfort, they bring me wisdom and clarity, and some verses are so devastatingly beautiful and melancholy that I tremble as I hold the book in my hand. And it’s a wonderful feeling that something can touch you so much! And every tear of poignancy that falls down my cheek serves only to water the future flowers of my imagination.

O to be dead at last and know them eternally,
all the stars: for how, how, how to forget them!
See, I was calling my lover. But not only she
would come……Girls would come from delicate graves
and gather…..for, how could I limit
the call, once called? The buried always
still seek the Earth.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, The Seventh Elegy)

Dreamy sky, pic found here.

Picture by Laura Makabresku.

by z a r i a n k a on Flickr.

My Inspiration for August 2019

August had not yet passed and already I am starting to daydream of autumn, its richness and colours, the final flash of abundance and joy before winter’s dreariness. As every year in August, I watched “Dark Shadows” (2012) and the scene where the train is passing through autumnal forest and the song “Nights in White Satin” playing in the background is making me so excited for autumn. The costumes and the music in that film is all I want in my life right now! Pre-Raphalite paintings have been on my mind a lot, and there are posts to come about a certain Pre-Raphaelite painter and some of his very beautiful paintings. I finally read Gay Daly’s book “Pre-Raphaelites in Love”, recommended to me by a very lovely person, and I love it to death! Love, art and gossips; always a wonderful combination if you ask me! I am slightly sad that the last official month of summer is gone, but I am at the same time ecstatic and thrilled about the joys of early autumn days which are upon me. I love the idea of a fresh start. What sweet melancholy, to be able to experience transience and yet not be able to do anything about it, like a leaf carried by the wind…

“Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”

(Edgar Allan Poe, “A Dream Within a Dream”)

Pic found here.

Pic found here.

Pic found here.

Found here.

Pic found here.

Pic found here.

trefriw, conwy, wales

Pic found here.

pic found here.

Pic found here.

My Inspiration for June 2019

The most beautiful and thrilling things about this June, along with the cheerful fragrant flowers, sunshine and strolls by the river, were the books I read: Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Coockoo’s Nest” which was funny and amusing at first but it stops being so amusing after you see the power and control the mental institution has over a normal, healthy man whose only madness is that he is full of life and rebellious. Suddenly it isn’t funny anymore, but tragical… Here is what the Nurse Ratched tells her patients about solitude: “You men are in this hospital because of your proven inability to adjust to adjust to society. The doctor and I believe that every minute spent in the company of others, with some exceptions, is therapeutic, while every minute spent brooding alone only increases your separation.” So, according to her judgement, Morrissey, Richey Edwards, so many writers, musicians, painters and poets that I admire, and me too, would all the fit for a treatment because we are brooding alone in our bedrooms.Crazy to think that such a person can decide a man’s destiny! My blood boils when I think of it.

Then, two amazing books by a Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić: “Marble Skin” which is written in the first person and the narrator is a woman sculptor who remembers her childhood with a beautiful but emotionally distant mother, and the other is a biography of Frida Kahlo called “Frida’s Bed”; it was beautifully written and I recommend it to everyone who is interested in Frida Kahlo’s life and art. Drakulić has the ability to say so much, and say such beautiful, poignant and meaningful things in so little pages, each of the books was less than 200 pages long. Then, I enjoyed the humour of everyday life in books by a Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, I read “Closely Watched Trains” and “The Little Town Where Time Stood Still”; both were humorous and full of fascinating observations from day to day life, but also, when you think of what you read, you realise how sad it is. Hrabal conceals the tragical aspects of life with humour, and succeeds in making us blind to the sadness and loneliness that an individual faces. And finally, I at last read a novel “The Stream of Life” (Agua Viva) by a Brasilian writer Clarice Lispector and it was very psychedelic and full of vivid ideas and descriptions. Here is a quote from the novel: “Oh, living is so uncomfortable. Everything presses in: the body demands, the spirit never ceases, living is like being weary but being unable to sleep–living is upsetting. You can’t walk around naked, either in body or in spirit.”

“…the June nights are long and warm; the roses flowering; and the garden full of lust and bees…”

(Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vanessa Bell, June 1926)

Tenby, Wales (by Sion Esmond)

Sunset in Cornwall (by Frank Fаrrell)

Shirley Jackson, from The Haunting of Hill House

Found here.

Sea thrift in Wales, pic found here.

Miss Patina

Northern Ireland, Instagram: emmaneagu

Poppies, pic found here.

Photo by Laura Makabresku

Zagreb, Croatia (by Alesha Brown)

Photo by Laura Makabresku

Ynys Llanddwyn, by Dylan Arnold