Here's another vote for Fred posting some of his work via this thread. I have such high regard for creative people. I think it's the one thing that has remained a constant in my life.

And Fred, I finally read your latest couple of postings, and wrote a response which has now been lost since my laptop died on which I had stored it!! Lesson learned. Now I'll just store things on my Yahoo mailbox so I can retrieve it no matter how many of these computers decide to bite the dust on me!

Freda, I envy you your circle of friends. My own are scattered to the four corners of the earth and the only way I can stay in touch is by internet (yet another reason to quickly find a replacement for the laptop which died on me yesterday...this antique I recovered from my attic is on borrowed time). I miss the kind of discussions that come when people get together in a non-competetive enviornment to just share their thoughts and ideas.

There's a documentary going on over here in England, about Van Gogh which is quite good. The narrator is trying not to get in the way of the artist (something which can drive me crazy) and I'm seeing some paintings and drawings I've never seen before. Isn't that always a thrill? To see something new by a well-loved artist?

And there is an Edward Hopper exhibit opening soon at the Tate Modern, which may be well worth a visit or three.

Therein lies the reason I can't pry myself away from London! After spending a decade on a Greek Island in the middle of the Aegean, and another decade+ living in Hawaii, I had craved access to art museums and galleries like a person dying of thirst. Perhaps it's because I was born and raised in Chicago, and I do believe that if children are brought to art early, it will most likely stay with them their entire lives. It certainly did with me, and on a recent visit from an old girlfriend, I saw the difference between her two daughters who were raised on TV and Computers...when we took them around to various museums here in London, they had neither a clue nor an interest in what was on display. They actually sat in the middle of a room full of Impressionists and wouldn't even bother LOOKING at the paintings!!

I wanted so much to be the one to open their eyes to the glories on the walls, but in the end only hoped they were late-bloomers to liking museums and would come back when ready.

I also am moved by Klee and Miro and Kandinsky. The man who inevitably brings me back most often, though, is Matisse. I know it's about the colours more than anything else. More and more, the research that's being done about Colour Therapy makes enormous sense to me. I remember recently sitting in front of the huge Rothko paintings at the Tate Britain and becoming more and more melancholy. Just shades of deep orange and browns, that's all, but painted in such a way, and with what I can only describe as an overwhelming "feeling" from the artist, that within about 10 minutes, I was depressed beyond words. That was an extraordinary experience...kind of like what happens whenever I hear Mahler's Fifth...

Sorry, off on yet another tangent...but what else do we have as humans that make us worth the air we breathe, if it isn't our ability to either recognize or create some form of art, whether is be the fine lines of architecture, or the subtle use of language in a haiku?..xx..e