Things of elegant beauty

If Sei Shonagon (12th c.) had access to Google,YouTube or Vimeo her lists would have been much longer.

Listed under “Things of elegant beauty” she has these five entries:

-A slim, handsome young gentleman of noble birth wearing court dress
-A bound book of fine paper
-Long stems of sweet flag
-A charming cat with a white tag on her red collar
-A three layer fan

Here’s my addition to her list – 21st c. thanks to Vimeo.

– Moon mirrors mind

Watch this real time video of the moon rising over the Mount Victoria Lookout in Wellington, New Zealand. People had gathered up there this night to get the best view possible of the moon rising.

Yellow on yellow

My neighbor Robert Petersen brought over this painting from his last show. We hung it in a yellow room. It’s perfect. Robert looks quite marvelous too in his blue sweater. When talking with him about color I found out that yellow is a primary color and cannot be made by mixing other colors together.  The primary colors: red, blue and yellow are the root of every other hue imaginable.

The writing underneath the picture of Raphael reads “Cinda saw a fawn last Friday”.

Today is a particularly drab January day with an overcast sky. Bleak is a word I would use to describe the day, but for Robert the sky had all sorts of grey hues. Looking out from my window he thought this particular grey was beautiful. We love artists for their perception and ways of seeing that can tune us back into what is most splendid: a yellow room, a blue sweater and a grey sky.

For more information on his work