I need at least a camera to document my pieces - this is the only thing of mine with a digital copy and it is just a sketch of the actual painting. It won't be a good situation to be in when I actually try to do anything in the world!

I was feeling the guilt of thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars being poured into my life, just me.

There are people dying tonight, frozen or starved or watching their babies shrink to nothing but bone and I'm reading a book about art history, the book with a price tag above forty thousand dollars.

And I remembered the parable, and I took the silver talents literally. The master puts real money in their hands, goes away with the clearly stated intention of returning, and even without his explicit instructions as to where it should be invested they know what he wants.

One is given five pieces, more than all the rest.

One, even with a single piece, is afraid.

The servant who feared buried the money, and at the master's return was called wicked and cast away from the house. Imagine if she had pushed it away in the beginning and just said, "No, I can't take this. Keep it master, let someone else increase your wealth."

It was the servants who accepted the amount given to them and increased them without fear, who pleased him.

I wonder if my guilt is the same as the first servant's fear?

For some reason when I saw this, I thought,

"Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

Excerpts from my study guide

Baroque –

Jeweler’s term for an irregularly shaped pearl, ‘barocco’ // Evoking emotional response, dramatic lighting, theatrical compositions, often multimedia

Classicism

genre paintings

still life

role of viewers

Caravaggio

di sotto in su

Vermeer, painting scenes of home and kitchen

etching, drypoint

vanitas

laurel leaves, honey bees, and suns

I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death.

Conscientious Objector,

Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have little to share but other people's great art these days. Much like what Jess and Tala were saying here. (: Twice at the MET and once at the MFA within the space of a single month - what other situation could I find myself in?

Facial expressions!

The best thing!

Beloved, let us once more praise the rain.
Let us discover some new alphabet,
For this, the often praised; and be ourselves,
The rain, the chickweed, and the burdock leaf,
The green-white privet flower, the spotted stone,
And all that welcomes the rain; the sparrow too,—
Who watches with a hard eye from seclusion,
Beneath the elm-tree bough, till rain is done.
There is an oriole who, upside down,
Hangs at his nest, and flicks an orange wing,—
Under a tree as dead and still as lead;
There is a single leaf, in all this heaven
Of leaves, which rain has loosened from its twig:
The stem breaks, and it falls, but it is caught
Upon a sister leaf, and thus she hangs;
There is an acorn cup, beside a mushroom
Which catches three drops from the stooping cloud.
The timid bee goes back to the hive; the fly
Under the broad leaf of the hollyhock
Perpends stupid with cold; the raindark snail
Surveys the wet world from a watery stone...
And still the syllables of water whisper:
The wheel of cloud whirs slowly: while we wait
In the dark room; and in your heart I find
One silver raindrop,—on a hawthorn leaf,—
Orion in a cobweb, and the World.

Aiken

It is twenty minutes past midnight, and even in the late-night seasickness that makes me feel divided into body and consciousness, I can hear the rain in a steady falling river off my roof.

Hieronymus Bosch

I may have found one of my favorite paintings today.

Do an image search of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights; you will find hundreds of details from this one triptych to fascinate and confuse.

So bizarrely strange, but entirely full of meaning, aesthetic appeal, oddity and discomfort.