Un Chateau en France.....

(Both photos by Loomis Dean)


"Ceux qui n'ont pas connu l'Ancien Régime ne pourront jamais savoir ce qu'était la douceur de vivre" - Talleyrand

Painter - J. M. William Turner (1775 - 1851), London, England

Selfportrait 1799

It is spring and many people out there start to warm up as the sun warms their souls, minds and hearts. Light, Sun, makes me think about William Turner.

Look at his pictures and your breath will be taken away, the light in his pictures is indescribable you are drawn and pulled into his art. Few landscape painters will have the impact on us as Turner.

As a young boy I took my first step into the world of Turners art, guided by my Aunt, a Lady, beautiful in a classical sense, "l'Ancien Régime" and "Noblesse Oblige". Turner is consider in England maybe even the world, as one of the finest landscape artists. He devoted his life to his art and had exhibitions already as a teenager. Many artists have to struggle in life and their fame is after they have died. Turner could enjoy the fruits of being successful during his lifetime.

A colorful model - Countess Vera "Veruschka" von Lehndorff....

Self-portrait

We know she worked for photographer Peter Beard in East Africa (Kenya - I still call it East Africa). Model for Eileen Ford and she walked out on Grace Mirabella (editor-in-chief for Vogue) in 1975. A definitely colorful personality - exotic - mystical - sensual - Click here to see her transforming in to an extraordinary animal. Africa/Veruschka/Animal Here are a few fashion photos by Peter Beard and Henry Clarke (1918-1996).

Photo by Peter Beard

Photo Peter Beard

Photo 1963 by Henry Clarke

Photo 1964 by Henry Clarke

Wine, Wine, Wine...

(Photo by Carlo Bavagnoli)

First they found an old bottle of wine in a vineyard close to the town of Speyer in Germany and the bottle was estimated to be from 325 A.D. - found in 1867. You can find it at the Historical Museum of the Pfalz.

Not good enough, in 2003 - a white wine barrel containing a white Alsace wine from the Alsace in Strasbourg, France showed up - A 500 years old ageing bottle? no, barrel, not just that it is actual a barrel, it is containing 300 liters of 1472 wine, that is what I call vintage. 537 year old vintage wine. With a golden/amber color and an aroma of vanilla/nut/camphor - Well, it would be nice with a few bottles.

( 1945 - Photo by Nina Leen)

Matto Grosso, the Brazilian jungles and the disapperance of Colonel Fawcett in 1925

Explorer (for the Royal Geographic Society), Archaeologist, a strange disappearance of him and his expedition in 1925 has always been of an interest to me. After studying historical and legends about The Lost City/World - he truly belived he had mapped the location of the lost ancient city in the jungles of the Central Brazilian Plateau. As his disapperance has been a mystery and explorers still are looking for an El Dorado the Lost World of Fawcwett keep fascinate us. Fawcett had been sending reports to the Viceroy at Bahia from the Paraguassu River. That was when the last was heard from the expedition.Expeditions in this area had been conducted by the Portuguese in 1743 but it is said that the legend began in 1622. The city had been described in detail. Fawcett was a man of action, he had been exploring Brazilian-Bolivian Frontier 1906 - 1909 and had led before the Brazilian expedition seven expeditions.

Occasionally the interest of Colonel Fawcett reappears but is it Fawcett we are interested in or is it the Lost World and perhaps the El Dorado???

Classical Composer, mystic/sacred minimalism - a man influenced by.......

Shostakovitch, Prokofiev and mystical experiences with chant music.. His music is composed by simple harmonies - he describes his music as tintinnabuli (Latin - tinnabulae - of bells) which reminds us about ringing bells. Who is he???? Estonian by birth (born in 1935) today living in Berlin, Germany. One of my friends introduced me to his music in the 80s. His music is sensitive, moving, refined, classical and dramatic it unifies your thoughts into an inner world of beauty.

Let me introduce a musical genius

Arvo Pärt

Click for a dramatic experience below:

Tabula Rasa - Miguel Robles/Arvo Pärt

(Tabula Rasa is a philosophical concept - Latin - roughly translated to “clean slate”.)

and

Passio - Arvo Pärt

Max Ernst (1891 - !976) Sculptor, Painter (Surrealist) and Poet

Max Ernst was married to Peggy Guggenheim and later to artist Dorothea Tanning. He was a good friend of Paul Eluard, Andre Breton and Tristan Tzara and together with them in the early 1920s they all were part of the Dada movement (Dadaism). A lot of his more simplified sculptures and graphics appeals to me.

Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning

(Peggy Guggenheim - Venice Italy - 1965 - Photo by Carlo Bavagnoli)

I am Longing for some Bright Yellow/Gold Sea Urchin.....

How tasty, fresh sea urchin ......
Uni (oo-nee) is the name for the edible part of the Sea Urchin in Japanese. You have to acquire the taste. I eat it sushi with a raw egg yoke from the quail egg which makes it extra smooth. You close your eyes and you will once again taste and smell the ocean.

It is interesting that you can actually locate the roe tube as you look at each white band on the shell of the urchin. Each urchin has five of these roe tubes. Natures art as well. You can find them in all of the rainbows colors which make them excellent little lamp shades.

Audwin Pierre McGee - Artist and Adventurer

The Artist - Mosambique 2007 detail from one of his blog photos.

Audwin Pierre McGee

Click for A fantastic artist and adventurer with a passion for life

I am sitting here with my morning coffee in my "kikoy" and safari shirt reading through his blog and visiting his sites ....I can truly write a man with a passion for freedom, an artist with an adventurous spirit for life. Born in 1955 in Alabama, USA he traveled since childhood from the jungles in Central America to the African Continent - his hunger for life.. he has absorbed it to give birth to his art. How many times have you been enjoying the calmness and the smells and sounds of the tropical night when our thoughts get together and we create as artists or individuals building on our own sculptures at our hearts and minds. He puts it into life on his canvas, in his furniture and sculptures. Understated elegance, possible one of the most complicated and complex ways to express yourself. Looking at his pictures of life, nature and women, women are living sculptures in their own right - they keep on fascinate us, sensual, sensitive, intriguing,dramatic, or furious like a charging lioness, fire and water and in the end they keep giving us inspiration. That is why in all our arts they are a part of it.

The African continent - when the venom of Africa runs in your blood and veins it is as you had been bitten of a Puff Adder. You will come back to Africa again and again... it maybe take years until you return but you will be back..no one will ever tame this continent.......it has is own soul and life...it has it's own smells and sounds...you have to experience it to understand....and you will tell your friends stories and.....it becomes a part of your persona....

Here are some quotes I have applied on my voyage in life;

"There are milestones in every ones life, crossroads where either decisions are made or impressions gained that alter the whole future of the person concerned."

"If one advances confidently in the direction of ones dreams,and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with success unexpected in common hours"

H.D.Thoreau

So you definitely have to set your path, Jean Paul Sartre wrote in "Le E'tre et le Néant" in 1943

A man can will nothing unless he first understand that he must count on no one but himself; that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities, without help, with no other aim than the one he sets himself, with no other destiny, than the one he forges for himself on this earth". Hemingway would likely agreed with this.

Photographer Hans Silvester

Nature has spoken - look to these photos - Photographer Hans Silvester was born in Germany in 1938. A world traveler with an eagle eye for the dramatic and sculptural in these pictures from Omo Valley, Southern Ethiopia.

(All the above photos were taken by Hans Silvester)

Omo Valley in Southern Ethiopia.

Mursi Woman

Mursi Woman