SOBER&GENTLE

thoughts + things

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Sympathy, painting by Remedios Varo, 1955.

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Ayako Miyawaki (1905-1995) crazy stitching art. Discover more here.

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Sprites are bright flashes of light that accompany thunderstorms. They appear to be caused by ionizing disturbances occurring above a storm cloud, resulting from large positive lightning strikes between the cloud and the Earth. The atmosphere then reacts like a fluorescent tube, becoming luminous. This phenomenon is very difficult to photograph, so images capturing it are extremely rare. This picture was taken in Oklahoma on October 6th 2017 by Paul Smith.

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Gorgeous composition and animation by talented producer human aventura, 2026.

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Anja Rausch in the work “DRACO” introduces a psychological dimension, exploring how our perception reacts to overwhelming, attention-seeking light sources, a form of overstimulation familiar in both physical and digital realms. The resulting motif, with its green-violet tones and sharply pointed forms, evokes a predator or dragon, reminiscent of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. In Jungian psychology, the dragon symbolises the shadow archetype, our repressed and unconscious aspects. Confronting and integrating this shadow, much like a mythic hero’s journey, represents the challenge necessary for personal growth. Source : enari gallery

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Loving these illustrations and mysterious writings by Mattia Pinetti.

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A secret wish for 2026 : sharing more of my passion - playing music for people 💓

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My Wife's Lovers is a painting by the Austrian painter Carl Kahler, painted in 1891. It depicts forty-two Angora and Persian cats belonging to Catherine Kate Birdsall Johnson.

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David Garland's photos of reflected sunlight / a sense of visual poetry. Gradual experimentation and discovery have led him to use simple, hand held materials. He uses a digital camera, but his images aren’t digitally generated, similar photos could have been made in the analog age. He's found that when his subject is “officially” out of focus, the camera starts seeing things. Like a mirage, these optical phenomena are real, but not the physical things they appear to be. In a sense, this is solar powered nature photography, and his images are discovered, as much as created.

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Daniele D'Orazi, 2026

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01-01-2026 / Somewhere in the mountain

B2B-ing with my twin 🌱

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The Checkered Room, Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, 1935. Oil on canvas.

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With his series « The Whale » (2024), Shahram Saadat turned carwashes into surreal time capsules.

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“Knowmad” (2000, Mel Chin) is an interactive video installation where images and motifs are taken directly from weavings by nomadic peoples of Iran, the Caucuses, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Central Asia, and Anatolia (in present-day Turkey). By turning these handmade designs into a digital landscape, Mel Chin honors their craft and their history (read his interview here).

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[soberandgentle]

“A Dog Day Afternoon in Paris in 1999” is an amateur short film by Sponjo Spingio, showcasing a handful of images of the city interspersed with shots of dogs, to the music of Guy Béart “Les Pas Réunis”, sung by the cameraman himself. A sweet and nostalgic jump in calmer times.