Lin Fengmian’s Wild Geese

“You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting”, is how Mary Oliver starts off Wild Geese, a short, heart-warming poem about coming home to oneself, the same way wild geese return to their nesting grounds after long […]

Mordecai Ardon – In Memory of Stefan (1972)

A fiery sphere. A horizontal line. Don’t stare too much into Mordecai Ardon’s Red Sun or you will get blind spots and reconsider your childhood drawings as masterpieces. Maybe your social media feeds, with their unverified yet ubiquitous quotations of Picasso, were right after all: every child is an artist. Ardon, a Polish-born Jewish artist […]

Herbert James Gunn and His Mona Lisa

At thirty-one-years old Herbert James Gunn’s life was only just beginning. Sure, the Scotsman had already been married once, fathered three children, fought in World War I and wandered through the cities of Europe and the sun-drenched north of Africa, milestones which would take many of us a lifetime to achieve. But there he was […]

Tom Thomson – Summer Day (1915)

Let’s play a game. Let’s grab a patch of raw green grass, spread our limbs on it like starfish, stretch our vision to hold the blue of the sky, and tag the clouds above our heads. Does that one look like an elephant taking a bath? And if you’re too shy or too busy to […]

Van Gogh, Hiroshige’s Cherry Blossoms, and the Impermanence of Life

Reading time: 20 minutes “If we study Japanese art, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic, and intelligent who spends his time doing what?,” wondered 35-year-old Vincent van Gogh in a September 1888 letter to his brother, Theo. Admiring the intrinsic wisdom of the Japanese artist who is unanchored from the dispassionate, reasoning […]