I have written about William Holman Hunt’s painting Isabella and the Pot of Basil many times before. I included it in a recent Wombat Friday and you can read the story behind it in the post Love, Death, and Potted Plants. It’s a painting that is hard to walk away from when you see it in person; it’s quite large…
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Exploring The Portrait
The Portrait is a poem I’ve wanted to write about for a while now, because writing about things is how I unpack and explore them. One thing I love about poetry, though, is its prismatic quality. The facets I see may not be what you see, but if we compare notes then new colors emerge. That’s where the fun is.…
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On Suicide
Friends sometimes say it’s strange that I can simultaneously be optimistic and bubbly while also being captivated by art filled with melancholy and death. I’m not sure how to answer except to say that I consciously choose to embrace life to the fullest and believe that my positive mindset is one of my strengths. But I’ve also encountered death, pain, and trials in my life that have helped me understand how fleeting it is. I want to experience it all as deeply as I…
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Elizabeth Siddal and Sylvia Plath are not your Suicide Girls
Saturday was the anniversary of Elizabeth Siddal’s death in 1862 and Sylvia Plath’s suicide in 1963. Both poets garner a lot of attention when February eleventh rolls around, and rightly so, because their lives and their work are important and should never be forgotten. Both poets have touched my life and I find it heartwarming to see so many online…
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Aesthetic Vampirism
Literature is filled with fictional portraits. Visual art and the written word can intertwine in glorious ways. Dorian Gray’s mysteriously aging painting springs to mind and both the image of Lady Audley in Lady Audley’s Secret and descriptions of art in The Woman in White are excellent examples of Pre-Raphaelite principles used within a novel. One of my favorite examples…
