Dil Hildebrand ~ beautiful paintings about the present

I came across this Canadian painter Dil Hildebrand, a few days ago when I was signing up to a great blogging site called posterous, where I have now started a blog about my Yoga classes (amongst other things).

I love the illusion of photographs taken in a mirror, or something like that. It gives the feeling of other dimensions, which is always of great interest to me.

I will keep an eye on Dil Hildebrand, and the blog where I found him: collections from the last place.

Inspiration from a master photographer: Patrick Demarchelier

As nearly always when I see a photograph that shifts some deeper ingrained notion I have about the role fashion, the media or celebrities play in our lives, Patrick Demarchelier's photographs pull the rug from under my feet.

Here we see an image which on the surface could almost be a photograph of 1920's flapper getting her portrait taken on her way to a soiree.
On closer inspection one finds the theatre of a Japanese Geisha girl, or the wild and woolly outrage of a girl today defying her parents wish for her to be the ingenue of their dreams.

I continue to be inspired by his photography as I have for the last twenty years or so.

Piet Mondriaan ~ his influence continues to enrich us ~

I took this photo at Gemeente Museum ~ The Hague when I was last in the Netherlands a few months ago. I've tried to find it on their site or elsewhere online to find the title and when it was painted etc, but to no avail! And my picture here is not ideal, as the glass reflection undermines the luminosity and beauty of this work. I think it was quite an early piece, before his more famous works, which everyone knows off by heart.

I notice that there's an exhibition on at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, and there's an excellent little film clip about that here.

Picture on the left shows the beautiful original Art Deco design of the Gemeente Museum in The Hague. All the interior, fittings and everything are elegantly original Art Deco. The whole building is a museum to that.

Its worth a visit if you're in Europe.

Ellen Von Unwerth and Lady Gaga

Talking about bunnies! I love the humour and fun of this photograph.

Ellen Von Unwerth takes wonderful photographs of feminine erotica, without it being yucky or salacious.

I have admired her fashion photography for many years and see now that it is another important key in unwrapping female sexuality ~ a liberating and also stylish expose´...

The Year of the Rabbit is coming

February 3rd 2011 is the year of the Metal Rabbit.

This is image is a nengajō card, which is a card Japanese people send to each other at the beginning of the new year.

I love these sorts of specific traditional customs and the images which serve them, not that I am one to get myself organized enough to participate in a tradition like this.

But I enjoy the sparse yet evokative technique shown here in this vintage card. You can see more these images here.

Helen Frankenthaler and the magic carpet

When I was at art school one of my hero's was Helen Frankenthaler, American abstract expressionist, and later married to Robert Motherwell.
Not only was she one of the few women working in this genre who was as renowned as some of her male colleagues at that time, but her works have a luminosity and vulnerability I've rarely seen elsewhere.

Whenever I've seen some of these huge paintings, my heart has skipped a beat, as I breathe in the courage and power in front of me.

I am so grateful for her work, she continues to inspire me and nourish my apetite for new frontiers of colour usage and expression.

Tango 1926 by Jacques Henri Lartigue

Not only to I love Jacques Henri Lartigue's photographs, but I adore the tango.( I got this photo from here).

The tango must be one of the hardest things I've ever tried to learn! Not only do you have to keep all your senses alive and sensing, but you have to rigorously follow the difficult and precise steps and moves which make up this wonderful structured dance.

I truly believe it to be a form of Tantra because the male and female roles are so very clearly defined and to do with those very archetypal actions.