The Cure Of Souls

The radiant soda of the seashore fashions

Fun, foam and freedom.

The sea laves 

The Shaven sand.

And the light sways forward

On self-destroying waves.

The rigor of the weekday is cast aside with shoes,

With business suits and traffic's motion;

The lolling man lies with the passionate sun,

Or is drunken in the ocean.

A socialist health take should of the adult,

He is stripped of his class in the bathing-suit,

He returns to the children digging at summer,

A melon-like fruit.

O glittering and rocking and bursting and blue

-Eternities of sea and sky shadow no pleasure:

Time unheard moves and the heart of man is eaten

Consummately at leisure.

The novelist tangential on the boardwalk overhead

Seeks his cure of souls in his own anxious gaze.

"Here," he says, "With whom?" he asks, "This?" he questions,

"What tedium, what blaze?

What satisfaction, fruit? 

What transit, heaven?

Criminal? Justified? 

Arrived at what June?"

That nervous conscience amid the concessions

Is haunting, haunted moon.

The Cure of Souls by Henry James

Night, when words fade & things come alive.

"Night, the beloved. 

Night, when words fade & things come alive.

When the destructive analysis of day is done, 

and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. 

When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree. "

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery ~

Inside

Inside by Jo Bradford

I have been cramming a lot into my days the last few weeks. There has not been much time to blog between the activites. I have been delivering alternative process workshops, teaching people how to take photographs and develop and print them and also making and listing and selling new work on all of my galleries. There have been a lot of late nights recently and as I type my eyelids are feeling heavy and ready to close for the night.

Translucent

Translucent by Jo Bradford

I have been enjoying immersing myself in my photography in my studio these last few weeks. The front area of my studio has large north facing windows, an artists dream from a lighting point of view. I am also lucky to have a wonderful plant nursery in the shared yard at my studio workshop space. I often scrape together my pennies and pop into the greenhouse to see what delights have been nurtured there by the loving hands of Mary and John, whose business it is. I loved this shoot I did last week as the early evening light in my studio was filling the room with a warm glow. The translucent petals were positively radiating coloured light as I worked, and the scene filling my lens was rather reminiscent of stained glass windows.

The Language of Flowers Part I

Good Fortune by Jo Bradford

...In the language of the flowers

the Alium represents

good fortune and prosperity...

Forbidden Fruit

Forbidden Fruit by Jo Bradford

To satisfie the sharp desire I had

Of tasting those fair Apples, I resolv'd

Not to deferr; hunger and thirst at once,

Powerful perswaders, quick'nd at the scent

Of that alluring fruit, urg'd me so keene.

(Satan tempting Eve)

Milton ~ Paradise Lost (9.584-588)

Life Is But A Many Hued Reflection

Life Is But Light In Many Hued Reflection by Jo Bradford

The rainbow mirrors human aims and action.

Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing

Life is but light in many-hued reflection.

~ Goethe

"Life is but light in many hued reflection" is from a series of 7 images of bubbles I made while exploring notions of transience and the human condition.

© All contributed content, all rights reserved

Big Blue Sea

Big Blue Sea by Jo Bradford

This is my newest listing to my Green Island Art shop - I took it on Sunday - I was in the dunes with my dog, enjoying the sun and these glimpses of the ocean through the long grass.