field notes

We are never more profoundly human than when we express our yearning, nor closer to the divine than when we imagine. – James Hollis

[arinewman7]

Tor im Garten (Gate in the Garden)

Paul Klee

Oil paint on cardboard nailed on a stretcher, 1926

[jareckiworld]

Frantz Zéphirin — Spirit World Capture (acrylic on canvas, 1995)

[busybeingblack]

“Against all sorts of odds, you rise. You win. What victory will you claim next?” — Essex Hemphill

Anchored in and held by the love of Black poets and Sufi mystics, a new episode of Busy Being Black surfaces to make the case that the pursuit of our joy is not optional. And in those moments when we feel hopeless and joyless (and we will), Essex Hemphill has gifted us timeless reminders that our reverence for what we love is precisely what keeps it—and us—alive.

The Alchemy of Black Joy — Rosel Jackson Stern

Podcast Episode · Busy Being Black with Joshua Rivers · 10 March · 55m

[busybeingblack]

I was today years old when I was introduced to the work of Frantz Zéphirin. I am rabid with delight, dizzy with enchantment. I could just combust into a million glittery fucking pieces. Of all the art movements, Afro Surrealism burrows into me so fucking deeply. I feel possessed. It is magic, it is incantation, it is me.

[nixscriptum]

destined to chase sunsets in different skies.

[tratadista]

Ferdinand Hodler, A Noite (1891)

[weltenwellen]

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, from “And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When The Rapture Comes”

[weltenwellen]

Victoria Chang, from "Untitled #5, 1998", With My Back to the World

[weltenwellen]

Joy Sullivan, “In This New Life”, Instructions for Traveling West

[henk-heijmans]

Harakiri, 2013 - by Seyo Cizmic (1958), Bosnian & Herzegovinian / American

[busybeingblack]

I reached out to a priest-friend to ask for guidance on how I develop a spiritual practice: “Pray as you can, not as you feel you ought to.”

[daily-art-academy]

Leonidas at Thermopylae

Jacques-Louis David, 1814

Oil on canvas, 395 × 531 cm, Louvre, Paris, France

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Hieronymus Bosch. Detail of "Ascent of the Blessed," late 15th century or early 16th century.

* * * *

"We now know that human transformation does not happen through didacticism or through excessive certitude, but through the playful entertainment of another scripting of reality that may subvert the old given text and its interpretation and lead to the embrace of an alternative text and its redescription of reality."

[- Walter Brueggemann - "Cadences of Home"]

[alive on all channels]

[random-brushstrokes]

Arthur Spear - Sunrise (1921)

[enchantedbook]

'Nighttime Travellers' by Barbara Sobczynska

[busybeingblack]

I jumped up and down when I saw this at tate modern. It is perfect.

[busybeingblack]

How I feel joining tumblr at my big age 💀

[penpen363]

The Fairy Dance

Karl Wilhelm Diefenbach

[busybeingblack]

What I love so much about art is the way my spirit responds “yup!” when we encounter art that points to something we know to be true. I can’t always explain it, but as we learn from Hollis and Hillman after Jung, explanation is rarely the point 🧚🏾