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Tales from the Island of Serendip
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8,956 posts in this topic

Tales from the Island of Serendip thread navigation

 

Serendipity

Serendipity - Paddyfield School - The Story of Mohan - Sometimes

 

 

Sting

School bully!

 

 

El Puente

Muralist Joe Matunis - El Puente de Williamsburg - Return to Paddyfield School - Lucina

 

 

Bells from the deep

Werner Herzog - Juliane Koepcke - The lost city of Kitezh - Sadko - St Clemente

 

 

DavidMerryweather

Virgil Finlay - Reed Crandall - Graham Ingles - Berni Wrightson - Al Williamson

 

 

Small works

Flex studies for larger paintings

 

 

pcalhoun & jimjum

Clark Ashton Smith - Pat's poems - Jimbo's excellent paintings

 

 

Father Hess

The Life of Father Hess - Kasauli Art Camp - The Death of Mohan Ghosh - Rabindranath Tagore - DavidMerryweather art collection

 

 

Black Marigolds

In Search of Lost Time - Georges Seurat - Roger Fry - The Trojan Horse - Ananda Coomaraswamy - The Great Stupa at Sanchi - Ajanta caves - Black Marigolds

 

 

Detective Stories

Johannes Vermeer 1632–1675: A Detective Story - camera obscura - Han Van Meegeren - The Theft of the Mona Lisa - Donato's Captain America and other works - Rainer Maria Rilke - Cornell Woolrich - Cat's space themed paintings - Netsuke - Hart Crane - Cat's 'Creation' - Boba's illustrations - Caravaggio's Nativity

 

 

Velasquez

Las Meninas - John Singer Sargent - Flex large painting - Thomas Nashe - Tom O' Bedlam - Georges de La Tour - Flex exhibition - Joseph Wright of Derby - John Martin

 

 

The Bosnian Conflict

Andrei Tarkovsky - Welcome to Sarajevo - Margaret Moth - Yasna's cat - Romeo and Juliet in Sarajevo - Miss Sarajevo - the Serious Road Trip - War Child - the Help album - The Ruin

 

 

pcalhoun writer and book collector

Autobiographical notes - Jade tiki - Ubbo-Sathla by Clark Ashton Smith - Robert Q Sale - Tekkai Sennin - Bakemono - Zuni fetish - Yooshi's ghosts - Kuniyoshi

 

 

Steven Assael

Paintings - drawings

 

 

Photos of Nirmal's village

When Shabana was 11 - Mohammed Yunus - Grameen bank - mosaics of Ravenna, Venice & Florence - Duccio's Maesta - when Tuku was a child - We cry to Thee, O Conqueror of love

 

 

Steven Assael

Bride paintings with details - Spirits of the dead keep watch

 

 

Calcutta

Flex photo essay - Lucina's gold medal

 

 

The hero's journey

The Courts of Chaos - 'The Heroes' by Charles Kingsley - Medusa - Archetypes - Chris Vogler - Galaxy Quest - the Trickster - Prometheus

 

 

In the beginning

Altamira - Shanidar - flower burial

 

 

Interlude

Mir para - Lija and her baby - Lullaby - Her name is Zoa

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More than one respected boardie I know has told me they have become disenchanted with the boards.

 

For me – and I think perhaps for them, comics are less about acquisition (though this is an inescapable aspect of the urge to collect anything), as it is about dreams, the intimate connection between our aspirations and our lives.

 

Above all, for me and surely for the vast majority of you, comics are about magic.

 

They mirror our desire for a life less ordinary. To be the hero or heroine of our own lives, slay the dragon, rescue the fair maiden, and help those in dire need.

 

Heroines – yes, I’m talking about you Sha!

 

 

 

"Man is a cup, his soul the wine therein. Flesh is a pipe, spirit the voice within; O Khayyam, have you fathomed what man is? A magic lantern with a light therein."

Edited by alanna
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Serendipity has been called “the art of meaningful coincidences” and is an important element in my narrative.

 

When I was 7 years of age, I read my first American comic book, one of the first to be imported to the UK from the US.

 

MysteryinSpace57CGC80-1.jpg

 

 

 

It blew my tiny mind. (Some would say my mind is just as tiny now as then – I would say it has considerably shrunk)

 

 

 

I’ve been waiting for the zeta beam to strike ever since…

 

 

And in a way it did.

 

 

 

 

Edited by alanna
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Mystery in Space #57 and other comics furnished me with the desire to become an artist. It made me yearn for strange, exotic places, high romance, for a life less ordinary.

 

 

Sometimes movies did the same. Some ten years later aged now 17 I switched on the television late one night and saw for the first time a film I had never heard of. It was called “Pather Panchali”, literally “Song of the Little Road”.

 

Pather-Panchali-006.jpg

 

It told the story of a young boy named Apu growing up in a poor Bengali village. The style was very much cinema vérité, very simple, straightforward and immediate. And no movie, before or since, has captured the authenticity of childhood with such depth and compassion.

 

pather-panchali-3.jpg

 

 

 

It won the Palm d’Or and brought its Bengali director Satyajit Ray - and Indian cinema - to world attention. Yet he made the movie on a shoestring, with a cast comprised mostly of amateurs.

 

pather-panchali.jpg

 

 

And he made it in segments, and whenever he had money, he would buy film, summon the cast, and they’d all troop out of Calcutta into the villages and paddyfields, and film another chapter.

 

Pather_Panchali001.jpg

 

Most vividly of all, I recall the house where Apu lived – there was a ruined courtyard, and in the courtyard was a dry stone fountain.It felt so real that I could imagine being in it.

 

 

Pather-Panchali-Movie-925047150-5064051-2.jpg

 

 

 

The movie was unlike anything I’d seen before. Echoing Mystery in Space, zeta beams, Alpha Centauri, the movie gave me the burning desire to go to India, - which without a handy zeta beam, I resigned myself to accepting was as out of reach as Ranagar on the planet Rann. And yet hope lingered on…

 

 

mamunbiswas201210121350009449_100.jpg

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I became an art student. I fell in love with art and illustration that embodied my dreams of adventure, of exotic climes.

 

I looked at great art, looked at my mediocre talent, and found myself wanting.

 

But still…

 

I posted some of the images that have inspired me here, in Bangzoom’s thread, a year or two back. Here they are again, as a Christmas entertainment.

 

And at the end, I will turn back to serendipity, and spin you a yarn about meaningful coincidences….

Edited by alanna
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As a young student, symbolism fascinated me for its intensity -

 

 

 

Böcklin: The Isle of the Dead

 

Arnold_Boecklin_-_Island_of_the_Dea.jpg

 

 

..and the Pre-Raphaelites for their mystical romanticism

 

 

John William Waterhouse: The Lady of Shalot

JWW_TheLadyOfShallot_1888.jpg

 

 

Alexandre Cabanel: Ophelia

 

120px-Alexandre_Cabanel2C_Ophelia.jpg

 

Edited by alanna
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And this is "Sadko", by Ilya Repin, a fairy tale which was also the subject of an opera by Rimsky Korsakov

 

Sadko.jpg

 

 

Sadko, a poor but spirited minstrel, wagers his head against the wealth of the Novgorod merchants that he will catch golden fish in the neighbouring Lake Ilmen. Aided by the Sea-King's daughter he wins, and embarks upon a voyage on one of the fleet of ships that have become his. Overtaken by storm, it is decided by the ship's company that one of their number must be offered as a sacrifice to the Sea-King. Lots are drawn, with the result that Sadko finds himself on a plank in mid-ocean.

 

Entering the Sea-King's domain, he plays upon his gusli with such goodwill that the monarch and his court are soon engaged in a frenzied dance. A fierce gale ensues. St. Nicholas, intervening on behalf of seafarers above, dashes the gusli to the ground, orders Sadko home, and transforms the Sea-King's daughter, who has offered herself to the already married minstrel, into the river Volkhov, on which Novgorod now stands.

Edited by alanna
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Of the orientalist painters of the nineteenth century, my favourite is John Frederick Lewis, who spent 10 years living and working in Cairo. Like many Victorian genre painters, he was admired during his lifetime but largely forgotten after his death until "rediscovered" in the 1960's. His work now sells for millions of dollars.

 

 

The coffee bearer:

 

John_Frederick_Lewis_004.jpg

 

 

Liliam auratum:

 

John-Frederick-Lewis-Lilium-Auratum.jpg

 

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Had he lived 70 years later, he would arguably have earned a living painting pulp covers like St John. Conversely had St John lived earlier, he might have been justly celebrated - and Norm Saunders would have been the american counterpart of Delacroix!

 

 

Life in the harem:

 

life_in_the_hareem_cairo-huge.jpg

 

 

An intercepted correspondence:

 

an-intercepted-correspondence.jpg

 

 

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Much of the fantasy illustration I love stems from traditions that through the medium of 19th Century painting echo earlier times.

 

 

JESSIE M. KING Illustration to King Arthur's Tomb from Defense of Guinevere and other poems by William Morris (John Lane 1904)

 

 

fantasy001.jpg

 

 

 

linky:

 

http://textualities.net/max-begg/jessie-m-king/

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J. NOEL PATON

The naked hulk alongside came,

And the twain were casting dice;

"The game is done! I've won, I've won!"

Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

From part the seventh, Coleridge's Rime of the Ancient Mariner

(Art Union 1863)

 

 

fantasy002.jpg

 

 

linky: http://www.leicestergalleries.com/19th-20th-century-paintings/d/mors-janua-vitae-the-gateway-of-life/13510

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