Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War | Imperial War Museums

I have been in hospital for two weeks, hence the gap in transmission.

Discover the artworks and story of Britain’s original rebel artist in the largest UK retrospective of Wyndham Lewis’ work to date. Marking the 60th anniversary of his death and the centenary of his commission as an official war artist in 1917, Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War comprises of more than 160 artworks, books, journals and pamphlets from major public and private, national and international collections.

Source: Wyndham Lewis: Life, Art, War | Imperial War Museums

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First Night Design | Remembrance Baby T-Shirt #Sold!

Remembrance Baby T-Shirt (sold in all different sizes and styles)
by FirstNightDesign

The t-shirt contains the following verse from Laurence Binyon’s famous poem below the poppy image.

For the Fallen

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

Take care and keep laughing!

The Character of Light – Part Eight

Pippa Rathborne's SCRATCH POST

Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Psyche outside the Palace of Cupid, 1664
National Gallery. Image source: National Gallery
“You know the Enchanted Castle, – it doth stand / Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake, /
Nested in trees….” (Epistle to Reynolds)

(FINAL) PART EIGHT

Claude’s Landscape with Psyche outside the Palace of Cupid, inspired by Apuleius’sstory, which Keats sourced for his Ode to Psyche, is a late work of the painter’s, an elegant baroque fantasy with less than the usual “incessant observation of nature” and quality of “Brightness [that] was the excellence of Claude, brightness independent on colour…the evanescent character of light”[1] that Constable valued above all other artistic attributes.

The picture’s shortcomings, its dark, sleeping stillness, as if waiting for someone to step in and breathe life into it, gave literary advantages to Keats. The glimpse of the stone…

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A Birth in Gaza

Following on from my earlier re-blog about war from Order of Truth, I offer this piece by Peter Wells of Counting Ducks, which provides a powerful statement about the horrors of war and the mental scars that follow trauma.

countingducks

To those unknowing of my childhood my enigmatic and disconnected behaviour must have seemed odd and possibly uncivilised. In youth I could not see beyond getting by and surviving day by day; ‘learning’ was another country where less damaged people lived. I was busy trying to fly that alien craft I was to discover was myself. Sometime after youth I became aware I was a bruise, and every touch hurt me: intimacy, my most desired wish remained my deepest fear. In time, looking around me I saw that everyone has their bruises to some degree and felt, and understood, like me, that to a greater or lesser extent our limping and imperfect journey to a fog-bound destination was marked by the need for self-protection. Those marks, invisible to the naked eye, were our unspoken history, not recorded in those smiling photographs taken on the beach, sitting beside the man who abused you when…

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A Soldier’s Poem (#war #conflict #welfare)

This article and the soldier’s poem are very powerful indeed. The message is clear.

Order Of Truth

This is a poem from one of our visitors which relays the feeling of many soldiers around the world.

After dedicating one’s life to what one believes at the time is an honourable and just cause, many soldiers return to question the motives of those who are responsible for sending them into conflict.

When they return or are no longer of use to those in power, they are cast aside to cope with the aftermath – very often with tragic consequences for them and their loved ones.

They are ‘expected’ by those in power (who are responsible for sending them into conflict in the first place) to cope without any support – to pull themselves together and get on with being a ‘normal’ member of society.

It is impossible for anyone who has experienced conflict in a war zone to view the world the same as they did before. They…

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Red tails, black wings: The Tuskegee Airmen

Eagle-Eyed Editor

Tuskegee Airmen in Hondo, Texas, with pilot Jeff Hefner, 2000. Public domain image courtesy of Tech. Seg. Lance Cheung, USAF, Wikimedia Commons.

It’s wonderful what you can do when somebody else believes in you. Sometimes you have to struggle to win over hearts and minds; other times you don’t.

John B. Holway wrote a great book about exactly this type of situation. It’s called Red Tails, Black Wings: The Men of America’s Black Air Force.

The book concerns the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of African-American men who began training as pilots in Tuskegee, Alabama in the early 1940s. Jim Crow laws were still in effect and although African-American men were admitted to military service, they were placed in menial labor positions.

But that would change, and Tuskegee was the beginning. The men of Tuskegee not only performed well as pilots in spite of others’ low expectations, they excelled. The Red…

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Under Full Sail: A Love of Boats

Under Full Sail II © First Night Design

Under Full Sail II is an adaptation of Dutch and English Warships in Battle by the Dutch painter Aart van Antum (1580-1620) in which I have used several textures to produce the effect of a fresco. My intention was to create a new version of the original, one that suggests peace and beauty and not war and savagery.

I’m a dreadful sailor, not because of seasickness, rather that LcSSc means I can lounge and enjoy but do nothing practical! I love everything about sailing: the sounds, the smells, the feeling of freedom. There is nothing more delightful to me than draping myself on deck in the sun and listening to the wind or lying down below and being lulled to sleep by the tink-tinkety-rattle of the rigging.

The men in my family have been and are avid sailors.  My father was in the Royal Navy towards the end of WWII though he saw no action. Although a successful actor, sailing was his real passion.  In fact, I suspect he would rather have spent his entire life sailing.

Oh, yes, and the reason I started this post is because Under Full Sail II has just been featured in the group A Love of Boats on RedBubble!

Take care and keep laughing!