Help me through the day
Help me through the night
Bring me back to Beauty
Help me make it all alright

I can stare at some of these for hours..........such a calming effect.

Visual art: for example, the power of paintings
 

Not many people know that if you take a painting into your life as one of your personal windows on the world, it can grow in power and for years and years, a painting will be your friend and supporter; it will speak to you and you will speak to it; and it looks different at different times, in different light, mostly, because you learn to see the world and all of humankind with different eyes.

The creators of Beauty are the true revolutionaries.

Example of the power of paint:

And John swooned.

He fell off his chair and had to be revived. Liv got down on the floor and held him in her arms, and asked, are you okay, and he said, yes, I am with you.

But friends thought the Mirapex must be getting to him, and that these fainting episodes might be really dangerous.

Then Jules Olitski, who also had Parkinson’s, came to the rescue. He reclaimed the verb “to swoon”, as in, “to be overwhelmed by ecstatic joy.” And he was not a musician or a dancer. Except that, actually he was, but it happened to him in colors. He found the Zone in paint. Like the ones who painted the dancers 50,000 years ago.

And it was swoonable.

Jules Olitski said: “... I remember coming all of a sudden upon Vermeer’s View of Delft. I was walking towards it, I must have been about twenty feet or more away, and I didn’t even know it was a Vermeer. One doesn’t swoon anymore since the nineteenth century, but like a maiden I swooned… it was the most beautiful painting I had ever seen.”

and.....here it is.

http://www.uncp.edu/home/rwb/vermeer_delft.jpg

Speaking of which....has anyone read Homer's Odyssey where he writes about Scylla and Charybdis?

This is not a painting but it could be. It's my home town in Italy. Now spelled Scilla, in the Province of Reggio Calabria.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...rinagrande.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...llo_scilla.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...1183037007.jpg

An aerial view (looks like the head of an eagle). The castle is moorish and the rock it sits on is hollow. First settled by pirates. Oh Oh.....I'm giving away my heritage hehe.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...07/scilla1.jpg

This is her beach.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...7/scilla14.jpg

[QUOTE=bluedahlia;699063]

This is not a painting but it could be. It's my home town in Italy. Now spelled Scilla, in the Province of Reggio Calabria. Quote)

These people lived their lives surrounded by Beauty.
What great work is mankind
\
Behold the Majesty of Creation

From this broken hill
all thy praises they shall ring

Beautiful
 

I just finished looking at these gorgeous and uplifting paintings. Thank you so much for sharing them.
This one looks as if it could be done in the castle at the headlands in your hometown in Italy.
Looking at them helps in attempting a journey towards grace.

[QUOTE=bluedahlia;573643][B][B][B]Lawrence Alma-Tadema

The Coign of Vantage - 1895

Will get back to this thread after I am turned "ON". Programming starts this Thursday.

chapter 98
 

In the end, I return to Beauty. This is the forest where I walk everyday I can. Thank you all of you. I fought well but now I am weary. Remember I love you. Follow beauty.
Forgive my trespasses. Remember me as one who tried.

Music by Philip Glass, paintings by my eldest son, Soren Dawson.
http://parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com/...hapter-98.html

Bob Dawson
Miam Maikan

Thank you bluedahlia
 

What a wonderful collection that you made accessible by a mouse click. I know it is too much to ask but I wish that you put the name of the artist and period or may be you mean to test us!? I tell you in avance that I failed miserably in the test :).
Big cheer to you,
Imad

I will try! Thank you.

My husband has PD and was diagnosed in 2006 aged 61. He is now retired and has found enormous pleasure from his amateur art. He has joined two local societies and made many friends.

We both love art and I particularly like the French impressionists.

Thank you
 

Thank you for sharing the nice artwork.

The Poet Acts - landscape paintings
 

If you watch this video, these are trees on my farm, and note that there is nothing man-made in any of them. No fences, for example.
I have to look at a painting a lot before it begins to speak to me. And then it does give me solace and encouragement and a return to Beauty. The painting gives me advice, in how to look at the world, and strengthens me to go out into that world. And the painting changes as the lighting changes, and as the years go by, and as your life experience deepens; the painting watches you silently like an Inukshuk, and it is up to you to recognize its power.
This one, with music by Philip Glass and paintings by Soren Dawson, is posted here as a statement of love to all of you.
http://parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com/...hapter-98.html

Not exactly art but from my backyard.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...Picture107.jpg

Here's my little pooch. She is my work of Art!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...Picture110.jpg

I thank thee for reminding me to look at the Beauty of it all
 

Bluedahlia, thank you for being there again. That little dog has got you entirely figured out, in a bond of friendship that shows how life is meant to be. And the flower in the rocky soil. There is beauty all around us.

25,000 clicks have come to see Bluedahlia's staggering treasure trove of staggering beauty; 25,000 people have visited Bluedahlia's sanctuary of Beauty that takes your breath away, a powerful celebration of love and life and just the Beauty of it all. On a website where everybody has a crippling, life-destroying sickness, one of the most visited threads is simply about how lucky we all are to have been born and lived and witnessed such beauty of creation; that's Bluedahlia's thread about the Beauty of it All.
Thank you, Blue

For your celebration of life in the face of suffering. For reminding us to see the Beauty, and avoid the list of slaughters on the daily news.

For reminding us that we are surrounded by Beauty and Eternity - and all in all, we have had a good time. We have all seen wonders.

On this site, in a huge conversation about a horrendous disease, one of the most visited threads is this one, simply about Beauty - and the Beauty that we can live in some of the time, when we remember to go back to beauty and affection, in between crash-landings and struggles.
It is the secret world of Parkinson`s. We need constant transfusions of Beauty. And we give more than we take.
Wanna see some high-level stuff? Check out all the Beauty in this, Bludahlia's collection of staggeringly beautiful, life-affirming art. And understand she gathered this Beauty together and brought to us, who suffer what she suffers.
Such a noble reaction to suffering - to salute the beauty of life.
Bob Dawson

Thank you!
 

This is a great idea. It's definitely nice to surround oneself with beauty instead of dwelling on any negativity :)

Oh, I really do like your flower photo. You cropped it very nicely. You have a good eye for the natural world.

I like the formal art, too. As suggested before it would be nice if you could note who the artist was. I also have a terrible memory. :)

Steve

Art gets through to people faster and deeper than politics
 

This thread about beauty is the creation of Bluedahlia; in a site about suffering, she posted page after page of stunning beauty. And 29,000 pageviews: 29,000 clicks for beauty, on a forum that deals with suffering and cruel death. We need art and truth and wonderment as much as we need sinemet.

My wife and I lived on a Reservation and have been active for 40 years with Innu and Inuit; that is our first cause; Parkinson’s comes next. Now I am mixing the two: I understand why, for example, Igloolik has a suicide rate 10 times higher than average; tuberculosis 14 times more… but I do not understand why Inuit would have double the rate of Parkinson’s, and I intend to find out.

I have been busy in “Idle No More”, an ongoing protest movement originating among some Aboriginal people in Canada

It’s a dangerous racial political football that Canada keeps fumbling, so I consciously chose Bluedahlia’s method: lash out with beauty and humanity.

We gathered 15 videos, hoping that Canadians will SEE the native people they are spurning, just as we want People With Parkinson’s to be visible, to be SEEN as human beings, not just stared at as aberrations.

http://parkinsonsdance.blogspot.com/...hapter-50.html

Please pass it on if you see fit. It’s about Beauty.

Look back at the artwork Bluedahlia posted here. You can’t get angry and destructive when confronted by beauty. Art gets through to people faster and deeper than politics. People are hungry for food for the soul. The pre-verbal; below intellect and below ideas, and below words; yes, even below emotions: there is the pre-verbal. That’s where we are hurt and that is where we must heal.

If that is just a placebo effect, please, please bring on every placebo you can find.

art on the web - links
 

Hi, what a great idea - I had not thought about viewing art on my computer - too busy googling etc. Soothing and takes my mind away from PD thinking!

Coincedently, I was at the Apple MacWorld a few weeks ago and listened to a talk "art goes digital" - about where to find art on the internet:

artsy.net - a variety of pieces

googleartproject.com - I think google drove their cam cars around major galleries and took hi res photos

artauthority.net - more collections but I think this is an ipad app

I haven't really explored these links in any detail, but I'm sure there's lots more and apologies if this info is already buried in the thread

btw, 2 out of 3 of my kids are serious artists, and I'm not - go figure

Thanks to whoever started this discussion...

Brian

Something a little different......

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.n...96014274_n.png

It's been too long since I visited this thread~ my heart swells and my spirit soars when I touch on beauty, connect with others who thrive on beauty. Thank you all. Every time I feel sad or discouraged I take my camera and go in search of beauty, or I make something, anything! Here's a token of my gratitude...