'Happiness is an angel with a serious face.'

sculpture, 'Head of a Woman' - 1912 and 'Blue Eyes' [portrait of Madame Jeanne Hébuterne] - 1917

While visiting Erica earlier this year I saw this art at a Marc Chagall exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art which included some work by his contemporaries, in particular Amadeo Modigliani.

'Portrait of a Polish Woman' - 1919

ABC Wednesday's letter du jour is M for Amedeo Modigliani, an Italian painter & sculptor who lived from 1884-1920. He studied in Italy but made his more famous work while in Paris in the Left Bank bohemian Montparnasse with contemporaries like Picasso and Chagall. His work is easily recognizable in the painted figures with elongated bodies and mask-like sculptures. Sadly he died at 36 from drug and alcohol abuse, and finally, tuberculosis.

Visit Mrs Nesbitt's ABC Wednesday for many more uses of the letter 'M'
title quote by Modigliani

Saturday's stories

I prefer winter and fall,
when you feel the bone structure of
the landscape- the loneliness of it,
the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it,
the whole story doesn't show.

Andrew Wyeth

Catch me if you can!

Time marches on. . . .
we're highlighting C on Round 4 of ABC Wednesday.

C for me always reminds me of my maiden name, Cuoio, which means leather in Italian. Perhaps there were shoemakers in our family. As leather goes, I do know there were cousins who left Italy and traveled to South America to work as gauchos on ranches there. Then there's the sugary delight with never ending versions: the 'Betty Crocker' cupcake from my favorite place, Cupcake in Minneapolis. If you'd like, I'll meet you there for lunch; Tomato Basil Soup and a baby cake, o.k.?

American Impressionist painter, Mary Cassatt with several of many paintings and drawings of children. My favorite being the last on the right because Erica used her left index finger as a binkie when she was a baby too. Sweet memories and likely some needed orthodontic work as a result!

The book that most influenced me during my tentative adolescence, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. While the rest of my lit class was involved with the class reading list, I kept this book in my desk and surreptitiously read it instead. Eloquent, tortured bad-boy Holden Caulfield became my James Dean and I've never quite let go of that crush.Finally, one of my favorites, Italian mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli.

Visit Mrs Nesbitt to see other bloggers' C-words for ABC Wednesday.

I surrender!

The first of all single colors is white ... We shall set down white for the representative of light, without which no color can be seen; yellow for the earth; green for water; blue for air; red for fire; and black for total darkness.
--Leonardo Da Vinci


When you glaze on a bright white ground it is like looking through colour rather than at it – like looking through stained glass.-- Fred Machetanz

The world is your kaleidoscope, and the varying combinations of colors which at every succeeding moment it presents to you are the exquisitely adjusted pictures of your ever-moving thoughts. --James Edward Allen

*****

White is the color of the week for True Colour's Thursday. White holds hands with blue at times, like shadows on snow, puffy clouds in a clear blue sky, blue eyes in pale skin. My favorite flowers are usually white because they glow in the dark, are bright in the sunlight, and usually smell terrific. Visit Blue to see more photographer's visions in white.

Symphony in White / James Abbott McNeill Whistler