“Sit in a room and read — and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time. This realization of life can be a constant realization in your living. When you find an author…
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The image above is Solitude by Frederic Leighton and I find it to be a comforting image. It grabs me. Leighton wrote about it to his sister, saying “the vehemence of winter has scooped and worn pools so deep that . . . you come at last to absolute dark brown night . . . no…
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“Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.” Ludwig van Beethoven I’ve mentioned Evelyn De Morgan’s painting The Storm Spirits on this site once before, when I was talking about how my moods are often directly tied to the weather. I love a good thunderstorm, there is…
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We celebrate Thanksgiving this week and I have a lot to be grateful for. My greatest blessings are certainly my children and my family, but what I also rate high on my gratitude scale is what I absorb in my soul as I write Pre-Raphaelite Sisterhood. This blog is a lifeline for me and living…
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I’ve spent my entire adult life pursuing Pre-Raphaelite art and in doing so, I find that what I actually discover is myself. Art and literature are crucial to my well-being, it provides a framework to draw upon when I need to process heavy emotion. If daily life intervenes and I allow my pursuit of art…
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Today begins the forty-second year of ME! ‘Tis my birthday! In Ulysses, Tennyson said ‘I am a part of all that I have met’ and I believe that to be true. Our experiences add to our depth and the people and things I’ve met in life are part of my story, including the art and…
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There’s a horror that sets in just before a new beginning. It can cripple you. The key is to understand the process. Like everything else in life, there are stages. First there’s fear. It is a cold fear that paralyzes. Dive into it with a rush, it is like plunging deep into freezing water…
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I receive many positive emails through this blog because, for the most part, people in the world are great. The negative ones stand out, though, and occasionally eat at me. In a recent message, someone (I assume not a regular reader of this blog) questioned my feminism because I am devoted to Pre-Raphaelite art….
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When I was fifteen years old, my father taught me how to drive. I was eager, yet scared; I couldn’t believe that I had actually passed the test to get my learner’s permit. Dad wanted to give me ample opportunity to practice before beginning Driver’s Ed at school, so we drove together often. He’d pick…
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Since it is now the beginning of Summer, Sweet Summer by John William Waterhouse seems a fitting painting to contemplate. Reclining in the grass, a beautiful woman relaxes next to a cool fountain on what is a presumably hot summer day. Her fan lies unused next to her while her hand lightly holds a rose….
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Our local library has an annual fund raising sale. There are literally thousands of donated books and the sale is so popular that a few regulars camp out overnight in order to be the first in line. It’s a dream come true for a book lover. The first year I went, I pushed my one…
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Pre-Raphaelite art has its critics. I feel like many of them don’t actually look at the paintings or consider an artist’s individual work. They give it a cursory glance, assume that it’s all sentimentality and languorous women and then promptly dismiss it. A similar reaction takes place when people think of mythic fiction and fantasy,…
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Today I contemplate the floating head of Orpheus. Proper blog post forthcoming, but in the meantime I am pondering myth, beauty and violence. Just like real life, the beautiful and the grotesque often coincide.
About a year ago, I was lucky enough to acquire a two volume set of The Life and Letters of Sir John Everett Millais, written by his son in 1898. It’s a beautiful set that I’ve longed to own, but was unable to give it the attention it deserves as my husband was still recuperating…
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Recently I did an interview with a beautiful French online magazine, Les Editions du Faune. While it is a French publication, they have published it in both English and French, so there’s no need to use your browser to translate. It was great fun, a lovely interview, and I’m grateful to Fanny Se for…
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My moods are tied to the weather, a fact about myself that I relish. I can instantly be cheered by a simple breeze or a bright blue sky. This is why Autumn is my favorite season, there is something magical about the smell of the wind. But, at least where I live, we are entering…
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I am surfacing. I apologize for my silence and lack of posting. For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been coming to terms with the fact that my husband is going to continue to be hospitalized at least until mid-March with osteomyelitis, a bone infection. So, I’ve been adapting to life with three children while…
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My husband is in the hospital again. Still dealing with the repercussions from his accident last May. It’s more serious this time. An infection has spread to the bone. Let me use the technical term, just so I can feel the weight of it: Osteomyelitis. It’s serious and scary, but we are remaining hopeful and…
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I am exhausted. On a whim, I decided to paint my living area and kitchen red. I’ve always wanted red walls. I think they are bold and artistic and for me it represents a creative outlook that I’m trying to indulge in my life. But, good grief does my back ache right now. I am…
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There is a wealth of possibility in beginnings, especially the beginning of a new year. Since I see beginnings as positive, I think it’s dreadful if we add anything negative to that. I never form New Year’s Resolutions that have anything to do with subtraction. No eating less, no shedding pounds, no pining or wishing…
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This blog generates a lot of email. I try my best, but I can’t always answer it all. Often I will receive an email that I don’t have time to answer that very moment, but as I continue with my day I will mentally compose a reply, usually a great reply. Later I will embarrassingly realize…
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If you are reading Mortal Love along with us, you may have noticed that part one of the book is titled The Green Girl. It strikes me as such a perfect phrase when dealing with anything that even remotely alludes to the Pre-Raphaelites. This post isn’t really about Mortal Love, I’ll save that for later….
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