an ode to Matisse's dance

I first saw this painting 'in-the-flesh', when I visited MOMA in NYC in 1999. I didn't expect to be quite so profoundly thrown and moved...It was a painting I had often soaked in from reproductions in books and on posters. It is so very famous. When I was a child, I thought it might be some kind of tarot card, its magical impact on my psyche had already begun by the time I was about eleven, when I saw a book my aunt, the Dutch sculptor, Katinka van Rood-Bruin, had in her Amsterdam studio.  

Her brother, my father had died just months before, and that day my heart was aching and heavy with grief.  So when I stood in front of this work, the tears flooded and I had to take deep breaths so that I didn't wail with passion and emotion. I was in front of it for about half an hour. All the wonderful works in that Museum were calling me, their voice faint and easily put on hold while Matisse's dance and I communed. 

I felt so deeply held and healed by the Spirit of this extraordinarily rhythmic and beautiful work.

'colour dive'

I found this photograph as I was going through google reader today, the other photos here are also intensely colourful and evocative, but this one has that magic moment quality..the clouds, the ocean, the diver, looks slightly hesitant almost. Its like a dream scene, so perfect, slightly quirky and the colours almost bring tears to my eyes.

Ice Spiral - Tree Soul

I woke up this morning thinking about Andy Goldsworthy, artist/naturalist and in my opinion a kind of futurist shaman. The whimsy and beauty and alliance with the natural, belie an intensely deep question of what art is, how it can manifest through our imaginations and skills and speak to the onlooker in a nonverbal language of the heart or Soul. I love this work.

Sacred Tao symbol

'Talisman to vitalize the tongue. It is to be used under the sign of the thrid brand of the Twelve Earthly Branches, with corresponding symbolic animal Tiger, Zodical sign Gemini, hours 3-5 a.m., and point of compass East-North-East. It represents the Vital Energy (ch'i) of the purple clouds of the Centre of Heaven....'
I have this wonderful book which I look at quite a lot, but rarely read. Its called 'Tao Magic The Secret Language of Diagrams & Calligraphy' by Laszlo Legeza.