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Sources of Inspiration

Sources of Inspiration: Shape of a Flower

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I remember taking pictures of this flower. It grew on a tree in a little garden in Ajaccio, Corsica. Ever alert for potential blog and column pictures, I photographed close up after close up of this particular blossom. Its petals flared out, reminding me of a girl’s skirt, when she was spinning in the middle of a dance. Yes, ‘Fantasia’ is one of my favorite movies. Yes, I’ve watched the sequence with the dancing flowers many times. Of course, it worked its magic on my imagination. Perhaps I would have visualized something else, if I didn’t still carry that imagery … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: The Three Davids

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I saw three statues of the same David in Florence last June. One was the original in the Accademia in Florence, done by Michelangelo. You may recognize him. He’s quite famous. Many fans from many different lands gather at his feet. They crowd around him, trying to get the best shot of his marble magnificence. I particularly liked this angle. I saw his marble twin, his copy down in the Piazza Signoria in Florence later. He was created to face the wear and tear of the elements, along with the abuse of the living. (The winged living can be particularly … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: Caravaggio’s ‘John the Baptist’

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I just got a real treat last month. I went to Rome and saw my favorite Caravaggio painting in person; ‘John the Baptist’. This playful, ethereal boy is so different than the martyr, the severed head in other versions of John the Baptist. This is also very different from the two other paintings Caravaggio has done of ‘John the Baptist’, which are also in Rome. No shadow of death or despair touches this boy. He teases playfully, as he smiles coyly at us from a veneer of cloth, which enhances his nudity rather than concealing it. What is he subtly … Read more

Sources of Inspiration: ‘Frankenstein’

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“But I have one want I have never been able to satisfy; and the absence of the object which I now feel as a most severe evil. I have no friend, Margaret, when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of success, there will be none to participate in my joy; if I am assailed by disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I commit my thoughts to paper, it is true, but that is a poor medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would … Read more