Easter is here!

Sunday has come and our Lord has risen!!!

Giotto, Noli Me Tangere, 1305, Assisi, Italy

Noli Me Tangere in latin means "touch me not", coming from the passage in the Bible where Mary goes to the tomb and the angels tell her not to weep for her Lord has Risen! Jesus appears to the weeping Mary and says "touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to the father. But go to my brothers, and tell them that I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." John 20:17-18.

I do not know much about this painting. Only that it is beautiful and to me represents triumph over death, a white flag being waved above death. Death could not hold our Lord. This is an interesting scene because Giotto doesn't present Christ embracing Mary, nor is he rejecting her. But he is saying "wait! I will be back! I'm going to my Father to prepare a place for you. But in the mean time, go tell the world about me."

Happy Happy Easter! He has RISEN.

Holy Week: Holy Saturday

Today is Holy Saturday. It commemorates the day Christ was laid in the Tomb, Lent, and the last day of Holy week.

The Lamentation (Mourning of Christ), 1305-6

This is one of the most moving pieces. My heart aches and cries to see this grieving mother stare into the lifeless eyes of her Son. See the mother, see his friends, see the angels.

The tree that stands leafless, watching, perhaps symbolizes the the Tree of Knowledge and origiona sin. Notice, Jesus Christ, suspended between heaven and earth, a broken yet dignified body, broken for you and me.

Come see His hands and His feet,
The scars that speak of sacrifice,
Hand that flung stars into space,
To cruel nails surrendered.

Yet, while there is great sorrow, Sunday is coming...
What Sister Wendy said about this artist:
"Everyone who saw 'The Lamentation of Christ' on the chapel walls would have known the story well - that Jesus died on the cross and that a profound sorrow ensued. Giotto took that intellectual conviction and made it throb in the nerves." Sister Wendy

Holy Week: Good Friday

Today is Good Friday. We remember the passion and death of our Lord.

Giotto, Crucifixion, 1305, Padua, Italy

Now I can
Trade these ashes in for beauty
And wear forgiveness like a crown
Coming to kiss the feet of mercy
I lay every burden down
At the foot of the cross

Holy Week: Maundy Thursday

Today is Maundy Thursday, commemorating the Last Supper with Jesus Christ with his disciples. This Holy Week I want to highlight the paintings of Italian Florentine painter Giotto di Bondone (1266-1337) whose paintings date back to the Late Middle Ages and who is regarded as the first Renaissance painter by art historians.

Giotto is one of my favorite painters. In this painting I am captured by the weighty representation of the figures, the golden halo of Christ, and the concerned and uneasy looks of his followers. The time of pain and death is drawing near, yet Christ has a look of acceptance of what is about to come. Giotto has captured it well. As Sister Wendy said: "Giotto brought to life the mysteries of faith, and art was never the same again."

Giotto, The Last Supper, 1305, Padua, Italy

my childhood illustrated

As I sit here, basking in the sunshine of an early spring morning in the gleaming Emerald City, reading magical tales from many lands and feasting on its illustrations, I reminisce about the fantastical depictors of my favorite story tale pastimes that captured my heart and eye since and while I was a child. Let me share with you my favorite illustrators that contributed to my love of its story. I certainly will raise my children on these visual and story delights.

The whimsical Quentin Blake, illustrating for Roald Dahl’s Matilda, The BFG, and his other mad stories.

[The BFG]

[Matilda]

Garth Williams, illustrating for E. B. White in Charlotte’s Web (as well as Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House Series and many Golden Books)

Is this not how we remember Charlotte, Wilbur, Fern, and the other barnyard friends?

[Charlotte's Web]

And lastly but certainly not the leastly…

Pauline Baynes who took my hand and helped me remember moments of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia like the meeting of Lucy and Mr. Tumnus, the bouncing dufflepuds on the island of Coriakin, and where we first find Puddleglum the marshwiggle.

[The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe]

[The Voyage of the Dawn Treader]

[The Silver Chair]

My imagination will indeed carry on, but many of these images will remain.

Early Spring

Once more the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And domes the red-plowed hills
With loving blue;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The throstles too.

Opens a door in Heaven;
From skies of glass
A Jacob's ladder falls
On greening grass,
And o'er the mountain-walls
Young angels pass.

Before them fleets the shower,
And burst the buds,
And shine the level lands,
And flash the floods;
The stars are from their hands
Flung through the woods,

The woods with living airs
How softly fanned,
Light airs from where the deep,
All down the sand,
Is breathing in his sleep,
Heard by the land.

O, follow, leaping blood,
The season's lure!
O heart, look down and up,
Serene, secure,
Warm as the crocus cup,
Like snow-drops, pure!

Past, Future glimpse and fade
Through some slight spell,
A gleam from yonder vale,
Some far blue fell;
And sympathies, how frail,
In sound and smell!

Till at thy chuckled note,
Thou twinkling bird,
The fairy fancies range,
And, lightly stirred,
Ring little bells of change
From word to word.

For now the Heavenly Power
Makes all things new,
And thaws the cold, and fills
The flower with dew;
The blackbirds have their wills,
The poets too.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

Image: Alphonse Mucha, Spring, From The Seasons series, 1896
This colour lithograph by the Czech artist Mucha depicts a fair lady beckoning in the new season of crocuses, cherry blossoms, and all things new.

Hello spring, We welcome you!

Convergence of art and history

Jackson Pollock, Convergence, 1952

I love art history. Because it is the convergence between history and the past happenings with the coloured and textured visual experience within this present space of time.

so, if you please, allow me to share with you art that speaks to me, touches my soul, and plucks my heartstrings.