April 16, 2012

Thank you to everyone who took the time to email me about my "artist's block!" I've been trying your suggestions and am beginning to see improvement in my concentration.
With practice, I hope, as Tchaikovsky is supposed to have said, that my muse can learn to be on time.

I'm still having fun with Isaac Watts' "Divine Songs for Children" and the extravagant embroideries of the Stuart period.
The butterfly and tulip images are adapted from designs embroidered on clothing and household furnishings in 17th century England.
The quotation is from the same song I used last month for the flies, worms and flowers bead.

"Against Pride in Clothes"

"How proud we are! how fond to shew
Our clothes, and call them rich and new,
When the poor sheep and silkworms wore
That very clothing long before!
The tulip and the butterfly
Appear in gayer coats than I:
Let me be dress'd fine as I will,
Flies, worms, and flowers exceed me still."



"The artist is nothing without the gift, and the gift is nothing without work."
-- Emile Zola

I've heard people speak reverently about talent, as though it's the only thing an artist needs.
I think that for an artist, having a talent is just a beginning.
Without persistence, exploration and appreciation, a talent withers and is lost.

"What's a butterfly at best? He's but a caterpillar drest."
-- John Gay

This is an older bead that I'm adding back to the catalog. If you are shy or easily intimidated when meeting someone new, you've probably heard the advice, "Just imagine them naked."  The mental image that this conjures up can be quite distracting!
I'd rather remember this quotation - it reminds me that we're all human underneath, and if I do picture something, it's the monarch butterfly caterpillars that we raised in bouquets of milkweed on our kitchen table so many years ago.