Imagine

imagine

pas faux

Photo : Man Ray

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

―  Dr. Seuss

Labyrinth

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."

― John Green, Looking for Alaska

Love yourself

Paul Gauguin

"Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world."

- Lucille Ball

Spirit

Sydney Long

"My bones whisper to my blood; my sleep deceives me.
This motion is larger than air; wider than water;
Fly, fly, spirit. A strange shape nestles in my nerves.
Whisper back to me, wit. Im ready to be alive."

- Theodore Roethke - In the Lap of a Dream

Victory

"Double Portrait with a glass of wine" 

Marc Chagall

"Your words are my food, your breath my wine."

― Sarah Bernhardt

 

 

Victory

"Victory"  (1902)  Phoebe Anna Traquair

"I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body."

 

Pablo Neruda - Sonnet XVII

Ode to Klimt

"Ode to Klimt"  Gustav Klimt

There is nothing that special to see when looking at me. I'm a painter who paints day in day out, from morning till evening - figure pictures and landscapes, more rarely portraits.

― Gustav Klimt

100 Love Sonnets

Art by Sandra Bierman

“I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you simply, without problems or pride: I love you in this way because I do not know any other way of loving but this, in which there is no I or you, so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand, so intimate that when I fall asleep your eyes close.” 

 

Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

Denominator



Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny

“Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can; all of them make me laugh.”

― W.H. Auden

 Fairies

 

 

Dancer and Tambourine - Edgar Degas

 

"Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame!"

― William Butler Yeats

Pam Hawkes

The Players II

Storytelling, myths and religious iconography show us the possibilities of change, alchemical transmutations from the mundane life we lead. Through traditional imagery, text materials and painting methodology my work invite a questioning of the ideal. Paintings that hint at the seduction of beauty, jewels and brocades cocoons then binds us into a misplaced serenity.

Pam Hawkes. 2012

Icon I

Intimate Domains

The Players I

Behind the Scene

Follow me

Still Here

Cocoon

Fading

Terra Incognita

Warrior I

Warrior II

Last Stand

At first glance the rich,dark colours and muted gleam of gold leaf are reminiscent of grand Rennaissance portraits, but a second look reveals a vulnerability in the sitterswhich is at odds with their formal pose. Pam Hawkes's mind is steeped in illuminated manuscrpts and religious iconography which transmits into striking images of today. She loves the idea of stillnes, so often personified by the Virgin in paintings of the Annunciation throughout the ages, but many of the women in her portraits betray agitation behind the apparent tranquility.

Mary Rose Beaumont. June 2010 

Labyrinth

Swept Away

Night Music

Unbound

Stories of  Desire IV

The Game

The Impossibilities of Falling

The sense of innocence

Tracing Mythologies III

Unfinished Story

Pam is particularly interested in the notion of the picture frame and how the frame can interact with the image and has become an integral part of the work….She constantly plays with ambiguity, text may or may not refer to the image,and the subjects themselves are fairly androgynous, opening up a whole range of sexual interpretation and mixed meaning. The sitters are stylised and although they may be family and friends, this is not portraiture as you and I know it.
They are knowingly idealised, in a way that plays with a notion that there is no ideal family unit. Indeed, like her characters within the frame we too are trapped within a world that is not exactly of our own choosing. They are bound in a realm of domesticity. The fabric and the folds, the wallpaper effect and the use of household implements such as cloth and sponges in technique, all point to an artist who is fully aware that the home is not necessarily where the heart is.

Benjamin Austin. 2007

Battle in the Heavens

William Dyce -  Francesca da Rimini 1837 (Detail)

“Watch out for intellect,

because it knows so much it knows nothing

and leaves you hanging upside down,

mouthing knowledge as your heart

falls out of your mouth.”

 

 

Anne Sexton - The Complete Poems

 

 



Battle in the Heavens  

Nicolas Roerich - Battle in the Heavens  (1912)

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore. ”

― William Faulkner

Oriental Poppies

Laura Muntz Lyall - Oriental Poppies

 

“One word

Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:

That word is love.”

― Sophocles

 



Magic

Magic - Gulacsy Lajos (1907)

" Kiss a lover,

Dance a measure,

Find your name

And buried treasure.

Face your life,

Its pain,

Its pleasure,

Leave no path untaken."

Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book

The Talking Oak

Maxfield Parrish - Jason and the Talking Oak (1910)

BE AT PEACE WITH YOUR OWN SOUL

Be at peace with your own soul
then heaven & earth will be at peace with you.

Enter eagerly into the treasure
house that is within you,

And you will see the things that are in heaven,
for there is but one single entry to them both.

The ladder that leads to the Kingdom
is hidden within your soul...

Dive into yourself and in your soul
and you will discover the stairs
by which to ascend.


- St. Isaac of Syria (circa 7th century)
Nestorian monk from Beth Abhe on the Persian Gulf
Bishop of Nineveh (circa 660-680) -

The Sower 

Van Gogh, The Sower (1888)

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth

For all our sins against her:

For our violence and poisonings

Of her beauty.

 

Let us remember within us

The ancient clay,

Holding the memory of seasons,

The passion of the wind,

The fluency of water,

The warmth of fire,

The quiver-touch of the sun

And shadowed sureness of the moon.

 

That we may awaken,

To live to the full

The dream of the Earth

Who chose us to emerge

And incarnate its hidden night

In mind, spirit, and light.

 

- John O'Donohue, from: In Praise of the Earth

Territory 

Territory (1957) by René Magritte

"Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.”

- Pema Chodron

I am the Woman

Painting by Soledad Fernández

“I am the woman at the water’s edge,

offering you oranges for the peeling,

knife glistening in the sun.

This is the scent and taste

of my skin: citron and sweet.

Touch me and your life will unfold

before you, easily as this skirt

billows then sinks,

lapping against my legs, my toes

filtering through the rivers silt.

Following the current out to sea,

I am the kind of woman

who will come back to haunt

your dreams, move through your

humid nights the way honey

swirls through a cup of hot tea.”

by Shara McCallum

Past - Present

Art by Patty Maher

"We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present."

― Marianne Williamson

Flowering Love on a Starry Night

Art by Christian Schloe

 

“She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her... I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her...”

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - The Little Prince

All that is human

Dante Gabriel Rossetti - VenusVerticordia (1868)

I am not interested in enlightenment if it means detachment from the emotional body, the earth plane, the challenges of being human. I'm interested in enrealment, because it means that my most spiritual moments are inclusive, arising right in the heart of a heartfelt immersion in all that is human: agony & ecstasy, laundry list & unity consciousness, earth & sky, joy & sorrow, fresh mangos & stale bread. Its all God, even the dust that falls off my awakening heart.

 

~ Jeff Brown

Voice of Beauty 

Russian Beauty Wearing a Kokoshnik by Konstantin Egorovich Makovsky

“the voice of beauty speaks softly;

it creeps only into the most fully awakened souls”

― Friedrich Nietzsche



Plant me a Tree

Plant me a Tree  by  Catrin Welz-Stein

 

 

"All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

 

―  J.R.R. Tolkien

 

 



The Yellow Sail

 

 

The Yellow Sail, 1905, Pastel,  by Odilon Redon

 

"But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls."

― Khalil Gibran  

 

 

 

Young Woman with Garland    

 

Young Woman with Garland  by Sir Frank Dicksee

 

“All things truly wicked start from innocence.”

― Ernest Hemingway