As I was Going to St Ives Mouse Pad | Zazzle #Sold

Original & vintage art © First Night Design [www.firstnightdesign.wordpress.com]

Source: As I was Going to St Ives Mouse Pad | Zazzle

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Mark Twain says: | The Müscleheaded Blog

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in…

Source: Mark Twain says: | The Müscleheaded Blog

First Night Design | “I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means…” #Repost #Art

FROM THE ARCHIVE 8th August 2014

Postcard Lemons Post Card

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“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.” Robert Henri

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“It is go…

Source: First Night Design | “I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means…” | First Night Design

Dorothy Parker says: | The Muscleheaded Blog

“There’s a hell of a distance between wise-cracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wise-cracking is simply calisthenics with words.”

Source: Dorothy Parker says: | The Muscleheaded Blog

Marguerite Duras says:

“I’ve forgotten the words with which to tell you. I knew them once, but I’ve forgotten them, and now I’m talking to you without them.”

Source: Marguerite Duras says:

First Night Design | ‘She is too fond of books…’

Re-jigged post from 2013.

Louisa May Alcott, from a photo taken just previous to her going to Washington in 1862 as a hospital nurse. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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“She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain.”

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What? Louisa May Alcott said that!  Surely not.  In case you’re thinking that the author of Little Women was not the woman you had always thought, fear not.  She put this absurd thought into the mouths of one of her characters in Work: A Story of Experience, a semi-autobiographical novel published in 1873 about a determined young lady intent on finding satisfying and worthwhile work.

As if one could ever read too many books; as if a fondness for the written word could ever addle the brain.

The Complete Little Women Series: Little Women, Good Wives, Little Men, Jo’s Boys

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Related articles

• • How I Went Out to Service by Louisa May Alcott (mapleandaquill.wordpress.com)

• • Reading advice, from the uncle of Louisa May Alcott… (mapleandaquill.wordpress.com)

• 8 Signs You’re A Book Person (thoughtcatalog.com)

Padgett Powell says:

A quote by Padgett Powell (I’ve now got to look up who he is from Adam!) from The Muscleheaded Blog that made me hoot with laughter and recognition.

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Sarah

The Müscleheaded Blog

“Try to recall the person you thought you were,
and the moment you began to realize you are not that person, and then try to grasp and appreciate the high quality of lunacy required for you to have ever thought you were that person.”

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First Night Design | Self-Taught Artists: Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe [1887-1986] by Alfred Stieglitz

“I found that I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say in any other way — things that I had no words for.”

Blue and Green Music 1919-1920

“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.”

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First Night Design | Child in White by Pierre Auguste Renoir

Child in White by Pierre Auguste Renoir Postcards

The French impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), painted Child in White in 1883. His sitter, Lucie Bérard (1880-1977), was about three years old at the time and was the daughter of his friend, the banker, diplomat and businessman Paul Bérard.

Child in White by Pierre Auguste Renoir Greeting Card

Child in White by Pierre Auguste Renoir Stretched Canvas Print

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“Why shouldn’t art be pretty? There are enough unpleasant things in the world.”

“Work lovingly done is the secret of all order and all happiness.”

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First Night Design | “I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means…”

RECENT SALES

Postcard Lemons Post Card

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“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”
Robert Henri

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Alice in Wonderland Postcard

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“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”
Vincent van Gogh

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Cubist Shutters, Doors & Windows Post Cards

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“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.”
Kurt Vonnegut

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American Gothic by Grant Wood Print

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“Well, art is art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water! And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now, uh… now you tell me what you know.”
Groucho Marx

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Emmeline Pankhurst Greeting Card

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“Doing something you enjoy at times of your own choosing and making a living from it: now tell me, is that work?”
Tom Hodgkinson

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Vintage Clock Turns Midnight Stickers

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First Night Design | Selling My Namesake, Sarah Bernhardt

The Divine Sarah Postcard by FirstNightVintage

Selling my namesake is a thing devoutly to be wished, and we’ll ignore the fact that when Hamlet used the phrase, he was talking about suicide! This postcard of the great French actress, Sarah Bernhardt — The Divine Sarah — is winging its way to a customer.

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‘My fame had become annoying for my enemies, and a little trying, I confess, for my friends.’ My Double Life: Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt (1907) Wikiquote

‘Once the curtain is raised, the actor ceases to belong to himself. He belongs to his character, to his author, to his public. He must do the impossible to identify himself with the first, not to betray the second, and not to disappoint the third. And to this end the actor must forget his personality and throw aside his joys and sorrows. He must present the public with the reality of a being who for him is only a fiction. With his own eyes, he must shed the tears of the other. With his own voice, he must groan the anguish of the other. His own heart beats as if it would burst, for it is the other’s heart that beats in his heart. And when he retires from a tragic or dramatic scene, if he has properly rendered his character, he must be panting and exhausted.’ The Art of the Theatre (1925) Wikiquote

‘We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget.’ My Double Life: Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt (1907) Wikiquote

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Related

• Works by Sarah Bernhardt [Project Gutenberg]

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First Night Design | Written in Flowers

Written in Flowers © First Night Design

This piece was, to some extent, a glorious digital version of throwing paint at a canvas and swirling it around with a palette knife without any idea of what, if anything, was going to come out of it! I layered several images and textures of my making and one from Kerstin Frank. I played around for hours changing blend modes and transparency, lightening and darkening, adding and deleting, colouring and de-saturating — you name it, if there was a Photoshop tool for it, I used it!

The faint type you can see through the flowers is a vintage theatre programme from my collection. The flowers are from Vintage Art Download and wildly distorted from their original shape. Who says they have to be recognisable flower-shapes?

“If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun.” Katharine Hepburn

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Pablo Picasso

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Wherever you go, go with all your heart

ART FOR NOTHING

“Wherever you go, go with all your heart.”

― Confucius

watercolor – annecy – france – wherever you go

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First Night Design | Katherine Mansfield 1888-1923 | Quotes

In my opinion, New Zealand-born Katherine Mansfield was one of the greatest exponents of the short story. I devoured her work as a teenager and promptly tried to write just like her. Reader, I did not succeed! I am sad, now, that I threw these efforts away. Who knows what I might not have been able to do with them now. (Don’t answer that!)

Portrait of Katherine Mansfield (1918) by Anne Estelle Rice [Wikimedia]

“A. [Rice] came early and began the great painting — me in that red, brick red frock with flowers everywhere. It’s awfully interesting, even now. I painted her in my way as she painted me in hers: her eyes … little blue flowers plucked this morning.”

“Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.”

“Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it’s only good for wallowing in.” 

[Wikimedia]

“The pleasure of all reading is doubled when one lives with another who shares the same books.”

“The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody’s fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”

“I have such a horror of telegrams that ask me how I am!! I always want to reply dead.”

“I adore Life. What do all the fools matter and all the stupidity. They do matter but somehow for me they cannot touch the body of Life. Life is marvellous. I want to be deeply rooted in it – to live – to expand – to breathe in it – to rejoice – to share it. To give and to be asked for Love.”

The Garden Party and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

Related articles

• Katherine Mansfield
• Katherine Mansfield House
• Katherine Mansfield Society
• Katherine Mansfield quotes on GoodReads

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First Night Design | On This Day | René Descartes

René Descartes 1596—1650

Portrait of René Descartes by Frans Hals [Wikimedia]

The French philosopher René Descartes was born on this day in 1596 at La Haye en Touraine. The first quote below is, of course, the one that everyone knows in its truncated form, even if they have no idea who said it or what it means.

‘Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.’
‘I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.’

‘If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.’

‘The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.’

‘Conquer yourself rather than the world.’

‘Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.’

Dispute of Queen Cristina Vasa and René Descartes (detail of Nils Forsberg’s (1842-1934) copy of Pierre Louis Dumesnil’s (1698-1781) original. [Wikimedia]

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