fleeting, it's all wondrously fleeting

 

all above

francesca woodman

american photographer

1958-1981
~
below
i really don't know
maybe sally mann but maybe not
saved long ago sadly with no attribution

✝
❤
ecclesiastes 3:11
~
song here
good grief is everyone in ibiza beautiful
~this song-swoon-early 1990s flashback~

unknowable emergencies

francesca stern woodman
american photographer
1958-1981

song here

(not a hymn)
why not

~
article from the paris review here
an excellent read

~see ellen thesleff omakuva for a striking resemblance~

"fifty million ideas"
my editorial:
and those damn cruel drear corners

(oh see their beauty)
that call to be searched
be joyful in hope, patient in affliction...-romans 12:12
...count it all joy...-james 1:2-4
be still...-psalm 46:10

afterall, as woodman wryly states:

"this is serious!"
can we never simply stop
seek and sit in strength not our own
maybe that's wisdom

~
too,

our excellence points back to our creator
even when left unrecognized-our value endures. no one can dim or diminish what God gifts each of us
(with regard to the oft tepid response to her work at the time)
there you go, the appointed arbiters often get it wrong
but it all sorts itself out in the end

~

1 corinthians 12:9-11

~   ~ ~~james 1:17~~ ~   ~
and adding

1 corinthians 13:7

because it's always beautiful

✝
*for years i have chosen to keep editorialization to almost zero; since the readership/viewership of this blog is also zero, i have decided to express myself as i wish*

american gothic

above
john james audubon
french american
1785-1851

Coot and Magpye

circa 1802

watercolor and colored pencil on paper
~executed when the artist was only seventeen years old and living in nantes, france~

sotheby's

2021
each estimated 70,000-100,000
a testament to their exceptional quality
[not sure of price realized as i don't have a login and sotheby's seems to have forgotten their sales are public]

~thanks to my friend rose for pointing out the coot has lobed (not webbed) feet. fascinating, had never heard of lobed feet. well worth a google search, comically beautiful
and if anyone needed any further proof of a Creator there it is~

below
outsider artist
bill traylor

american

1854-1949

Black Turkey
circa 1939-42
poster paint and pencil on cardboard

these two artists, worlds apart in a myriad of ways, yet their work here a beautiful complement
~
black birds

of appeal to me at the moment; think i am in the gothic fiction season of my life
playing the female lead
requisitely and forcibly left in prolonged solitude
and who may or may not descend into madness

stay tuned
✝

under grace

 
edvard munch
norwegian
1863-1944
woman on the beach, 1896
burnished aquatint
-munch's color aquatints are rare and highly sought-
~    ~
~    ~    ~ ~
hymn
here is love vast as the ocean
william rees
known also as gwilym hiraethog
welsh
8 november 1802 to 8 november 1883
~ ~    ~    ~
~    ~

maurice denis
french
1870-1943
climbing to calvary, 1889
oil on canvas
16 x 12 3/4 inches
musée d'orsay
メnoticed similar in composition to
jesus falling beneath the cross
a nineteenth century engraving by gustave doréメ
~
matthew 6:33

~
romans 3:19-26
romans 5:2-4
romans 6:14
ephesians 3:17-19
✝

all the days

 
vincent van gogh
les racines, 1882
pencil, chalk, wash and watercolor on paper
20 1/4 x 27 3/4 inches
kröller-müller museum
the netherlands
~
yet
~
ever hold tight
to our blessed assurance
~
...and, lo, i am with you always...
-matthew 28:20
~
deuteronomy 31:8
psalm 25:6
psalm 34:18
isaiah 41:10
mark 9:23-24
2 corinthians 12:9
ephesians 3:20
james 4:8
✝

redounding faith

 
Sofie Ribbing
swedish
Boys Drawing, 1864
oil on canvas
36 x 31 inches
Gothenburg Museum of Art
~
hymn
Day by Day
Carolina Sandell
swedish
1865
caroline w. sandell berg, better known as carolina or lina sandell, wrote hundreds of hymns affirming her faith; some whilst suffering intense grief.
day by day was written several years after witnessing the drowning death of her beloved father, a Lutheran pastor.
~
Deuteronomy 33:25
Proverbs 19:21
Luke 17: 21
2 Corinthians 4:1-18 (directly 2 Cor. 4:15-18)
✝

brought to fullness

 
leonardo da vinci
head of Christ, circa 1494
~study for the last supper~
chalk and pencil on paper
15.7 x 12.5 inches
pinacoteca di brera
milan, italy
~
oh the deep deep love of jesus
'...underneath me,
all around me,
is the current
of His love...'
samuel trevor francis
english
1834-1925
~
lamentations 3:40
proverbs 4:23-27
psalm 11:7
✝

i am...resolved

ellen thesleff
finnish
omakuva (self portrait), 1895
pencil and india ink on paper

12.4 x 9.2 inches

finnish national gallery (ateneum), helsinki
~
drawn to you
audrey assad
~
james 4:8
isaiah 41:13*psalm 136:12*ezra 7:28

~
"God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
these are the words we dimly hear:
you, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
embody me.
flare up like a flame
and make big shadows i can move in.
let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

just keep going. no feeling is final.
don't let yourself lose me.
nearby is the country they call life.
you will know it by its seriousness.
give me your hand."
-rainer maria rilke, rilke's book of hours: love poems to God
✝

broken...forth

helene schjerfbeck
finnish
1862-1946
fragment, circa 1904
oil on canvas
12.4 x 13.3 inches

signe and ane gyllenberg foundation, helsinki
~
:though oil, painting technique inspired by renaissance frescoes:
<see piero della francesca's madonna del parto to name only one>
~
deuteronomy 31:6
~
hymn
morning has broken
eleanor farjeon, english
1931
bunessan: gaelic tune
~
"morning has broken

like the first morning,

blackbird has spoken

like the first bird.

praise for the singing.

praise for the morning.

praise for them, springing

fresh from the Word. ...

... mine is the sunlight.

mine is the morning

born of the one light

eden saw play.

praise with elation,

praise every morning,

God's recreation

of the new day."

~
psalm 118:24
lamentations 3:22-23
~
✝
κλắω

what's unseen

 
sir george clausen
head of a girl
watercolor
11 x 7.8 inches
signed lower right
sotheby's 3 july 2024
lot 62
'master works on paper from five centuries'
~
:love this image; see a little lilian westcott hale, a little gwen john and a little pompeii fresco:
~
-look closely and notice the fading to see how this image was matted/framed-
፨see what more is/was there yet unseen፨
~
great is thy faithfulness
thomas o. chisholm, 1923
"...strength for today and
bright hope for tomorrow
blessings all mine
with ten thousand beside..."
~
lamentations 3:22-33
✝
~~~
below
pompeii photos and article here