It was raining the whole day, since yesterday.

Confession:

Our beloved budgie flew away…I doubt it if he would survive outside.  Although I don’t like the image of a bird in a cage, I still got attached to him.  It was actually my son’s. In retrospect I ask myself: why didn’t I close the cage properly?

Back to work…

While I sit and stitch in the studio I watched the film: Basquiat.  O my word I love this movie, especially the following scenes:

There is a scene where Basquiat and his friend was shooting hoops and the actor Benicio del Toro shares his advice on how long it takes to become famous:

And then there is the fairytale told by Basquiat towards the end of the film…:

There was this little prince with a magic 
crown. An evil warlock kidnapped him, 
locked him in a cell in a huge tower and 
took away his voice. There was a window 
made of bars. The prince would smash his 
head against the bars hoping that someone 
would hear the sound and find him. The 
crown made the most beautiful sound that 
anyone ever heard. You could hear the 
ringing for miles. It was so beautiful, 
that people wanted to grab the air. They 
never found the prince. He never got out 
of the room. But the sound he made filled 
everything up with beauty.

I fell in love with the words right at the beginning and found out that it is from an article that appeared in Artforum called ‘Radiant Child” written by Rene Ricard:

Everybody wants to get on the Van Gogh Boat. There is no trip so horrible that someone won’t take it. Nobody wants to miss the Van Gogh Boat. The idea of the unrecognized genius slaving away in a garret is a deliciously foolish one. We must credit the life of Vincent van Gogh for really sending that myth into orbit. How many pictures did he sell. One. He couldn’t give them away. Almost no one could bear his work, even among the most modern of his colleagues. In the movie Lust For Life there is a scene of Kirk Douglas (as van Gogh) in front of La Grande Jatte being treated rudely by Georges Seurat. When I went to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Grande Jatte, it was having a hard time competing with the white walls of the gallery. This habit of putting old pictures up against the white walls is deadly, the walls reflecting more light than the picture, but van Gogh’s Bedroom at Arles was on the opposite wall and it was screaming at my back and I turned around and I listened. He has to be the most modern artist, still. Van Goghs don’t crack. But everybody hated them. We’re so ashamed of his life that the rest of art history will be retribution for van Gogh’s neglect. No one wants to be part of a generation that ignores another van Gogh. And yet looking at art history we see that these other guys were pros. They started when they were kids. They sold their work. They worked on commission. There is no great artist in all art history who was as ignored as van Gogh, yet people are still afraid of missing the Van Gogh Boat.

By Rene Ricard (https://artforum.com/inprintarchive/id=35643)

The soundtrack is also amazing….

And at some point during the day….this was the view from my studio:

What do you do on rainy days?