In the Eye of the Beholder

Over the past few years, I've been accumulating images that have jumped out at me for any number of reasons. I thought perhaps they would help to illustrate future posts, and then I realized they are a post. They each deserve their own place, but I gathered them together today as another way to pay homage to them and their creators. I'm hoping you'll forgive this self-indulgence and perhaps even be drawn to one or more of these images yourself. Like the illustration above, by N.C. Wyeth. I like the movement reflected in the water and the variations on the color turquoise in the sky. Then, there's the painting below by Willem de Kooning. I was drawn in by the sensuousness of the colors and the shapes:

This woman, who is standing so quietly yet firmly on this earth, is the picture of resilience. It's a photograph taken by Eudora Welty, who, before she became a Pulitzer Prize winning author, told her stories with a camera:

I am drawn again and again to this painting by Peder Severin Kroyer, the Danish painter I've mentioned previously. The soft blue, the child in wooden shoes, the clothing hung from the bow of the boat, the sand and the sea ... It's a beautiful composition and use of color:

Here's E. B. White, in a Jill Krementz photo taken in his writing cabin in Maine. He and other writers have expressed this need for a spartan space in order to minimize distractions and give the words a little more room.

I don't know if it's the mode of transportation, the mood it evokes, or some other even more ephemeral thing, but I absolutely love this painting by Herman Herzog:

 

Patterns and fabric, anything floral or geometric and the lines that form, catch my eye.  Like in this kitchen photograph by Camille Soulayrol ...

and in these images by Iain McKell ...

I'm always intrigued by images of people who seem to be living on the periphery of life, like the man above and, John Berryman, below, in an image from Life Magazine. His mind went spiraling out and never found its way back. Back to what, might be a legitimate question ...  But not today. Today, there's sunlight on the grass, a baby rabbit munching on some clover, and a family of cardinals on the feeder, offering each other safflower hearts.

"Above Everything"

I wished for death often
but now that I am at its door
I have changed my mind about the world.
It should go on; it is beautiful,
even as a dream, filled with water and seed,
plants and animals, others like myself,
ships and buildings and messages
filling the air  --  a beauty,
if ever I have seen one.
In the next world, should I remember
this one, I will praise it
above everything.


~ David Ignatow

Additional images and information on Camille: camillesoulayrol.com

More on Iain McKell: iainmckell.com