Budding Eyes

Posted on February 8, 2021 by Art for Housewives

The other morning I had many errands to run. Luckily everything I needed to do could be done in our neighbourhood giving me the opportunity to take a nice long walk.

Since painting my bedroom walls, I have a new mission—that of focusing on the beauty that’s out there just waiting to be noticed. And I ask myself if it’s possible that someone can rewire their brain by simply ignoring what’s ugly and mentally surrounding the self with beauty?

On a street intersecting with Corso Trieste, there’s a building covered with naked windows save for one dressed in fuchsia cyclamens. Initially, I simply walked past the flowers thinking how pretty they were. Then, BOOM! George Santayana’s ghost jumped out in front of me and said: “Where are you going? I thought you wanted to experience everyday beauty.” So I quickly turned around and returned to the cyclamens. Then, standing in front of them, I began to observe the flowers as if they were a painting in a museum.

The cyclamen was one of Leonardo da Vinci’s favorite flowers and he used to draw them in the margins of his books. Dormant during the summer, the cyclamen wakes up during the autumn, dances its way through the winter then, exhausted, returns to its seasonal hibernation.

Epilogue: Don’t ignore beauty or it will ignore you.

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Santayana’s Sense of Beauty

Posted on February 7, 2021 by Art for Housewives

My studio is near Rome’s Verano Monumental Cemetery. The “monumental” refers to the numerous monuments honouring the deceased within the cemetery’s walls. Verano is often referred to as “un museo all’aperto”—an open air museum full of sculptures. But it’s also a smorgasboard of applied arts such as mosaics, stained glass, wrought-iron ornamentation, and bas-relief decorations.

Verano, although within the city limits, is an ocean of melancholy cypress trees hoovering over the departed. A few years ago I was so enthralled by the magic of Verano that I used to go there on the average of once a week. Totally mesmerized, I would walk for hours around taking notes and photos. Because walking around Verano is like taking a tour of Italian history and culture.

It was on one of those many walks that I became better acquainted with George Santayana (18863-1952) best known for his aphorism “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” The Spanish philosopher is buried at Verano in an area known as the Panteon de la Obra Pia Espanola, burial space for Spaniards of interest who died in Rome.

George Santayana

The Panteon was designed by the Spanish architect, Javier Carvajal Ferrer, in 1955 when he was studying at the Academy of Fine Art in Rome. Carvajal, founder of Brutalist architecture which was bery formal and rational, used much cement, travertine, and black steel grating for the construction of the Panteon.

While teaching at Harvard, Santayana, always under pressure to publish something, the university let him know that “through ladies that I had better publish a book…on at of course. So I wrote this wretched potboiler.” The “wretched potboiler” was published in 1886 and entitled The Sense of Beauty.

Beauty is about emotion as it gives us pleasure. Beauty, therefore, is not found in an object but, instead, in the human experience. Beauty can’t be described in words. Because, to grasp its meaning, you must feel it on your skin.

and the painting continues…

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Related: Verano Monumental Cemetery + George Santayana (1863-1952)

Other:  The Sense of Beauty Quotes by George Santayana + read THE SENSE OF BEAUTY on archive HERE.

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Blue Walls and Pretty Thoughts

Posted on February 5, 2021 by Art for Housewives
a blue rug for blue walls

The joy my new blue walls has given me is immense. It’s inspired me to do some general restyling and decluttering although the latter not done a là Marie Kondo. Because, in the words of Diana Vreeland, the eye must travel and how can it travel if, in a minimalist setting, it has nowhere to go?

The walls painted, I sat on my bed and soaked up the blue. The beauty of the color gave me a tremendous sense of pleasure.

Beauty has a healing power. That’s why our soul hungers for it. So if beauty makes us feel good, why have we let the world become so ugly?

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Breaking the Loop

Posted on February 4, 2021 by Art for Housewives

The Grey Cloud was waking me up every night. I felt Apocalypse Now living in my gut—the emotions were so strong that I physically felt them. Descartes made a big mistake when he thought he could separate the mind from the body.

Stress was creating a chemical imbalance that was making me depressed. Depression is, in part, a feeling of impotence when affronted with a situation beyond one’s control. What I needed was to feel in control again even if in a realm that had nothing to do with the origins of my stress. So, to make my depression dissipate, I decided to paint my bedroom walls.

My Fairy Princess came to help me. And when the beige wall turned a blue pastel, I could feel the new energy. Fresh paint had given me fresh thoughts.

Advice to myself: The best way to change the mood of a room is to paint the walls. Because color can change your vibrations.

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Related: Color Vibration

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The Turning Point

Posted on February 2, 2021 by Art for Housewives

The Grey Cloud keeps following me. So, when I came across an article regarding Victor Frankl and Man’s Search for Meaning, I wrapped my eyes around it.

Frankl writes about his experience at Auschwitz because it was here that he learned what the primary purpose of life is. Often we seek meaning in our work, our loves, and our effort to be courageous in the moment of difficulty. Frankl’s imprisonment helped him understand how the intensification of one’s inner life was fundamental for his survival. Although the camp was not a place to create positive experiences, that couldn’t keep him from thinking about the ones he already had.

Because life is about making choices and it’s the choices we make that give our life meaning.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Victor Frankl

Choices need options so there’s not much else to do but construct them if I want to move forward.

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Related: Viktor Frankl on the Human Search for Meaning + The Bench

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