Guido di Pietro, a Florentine artist and Dominican friar, gained such a reputation for painting angles that by time he died in 1455, he was known as Fra Angelico (“Brother Angel”) Now, on the 550th anniversary of his death, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is mounting Fra Angelico, the first comprehensive showing of his work in half a century. On view will be his drawings, paintings (including Annunciatory Angel), and manuscript illuminations from collections in Europe and America. A don’t miss for lovers of art (or Angels), this show should prove to nothing less than heavenly. (metmuseum.org) - print -2009.

Early Morning – Florida

Historian Graff, whose book Watergate was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, spent an intense year writing The Devil Reached Toward the Sky (Avid Reader, Aug.), about the Manhattan Project and the dropping of the atomic bomb. The bestselling author of 10 books, who also hosts the Long Shadow podcast and writes the popular newsletter Doomsday Scenario, discusses the bomb’s legacy and explains why he likes messy history.

A delight to be seen. “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,” wrote Shakespeare. The garden offers license to dream, to slip for a moment like the fairy sprites, to another time, another world. Within tiered double rows of hawthorn bright blossoms toss, a sundial marks the hours, a fountain splashes peacefully, and on summer evenings the mixed perfumes of sweet alyssum and nicotiana rise in the growing dusk. Like the dreaming spires of a market town in Elizabethan England. The pink-blossomed Bergenia and the iridescent-petaled fleur-de-Lis, or iris are culled from flowers the poet knew, walked among, gloried in, and spoke of in many of his loveliest passages,” How that a life was but a flower in the springtime” find expression here.

Robert Burns' "Belle of Mauchline" is given a voice in this lyrical and intimate depiction of the life of Jean Armour, known simply as the wife of the infamous poet and mother of nine of his children. Melanie Murray's biographical - Should Auld Acquaintance -  reveals the historical tale of the talented farmer, a forbidden affair, and the tumultuous life of an 18th-century Scottish woman.

Romanticism artwork offered a fantastical escape from the reality of urban life. Romanticism focused on feelings and the condition of the soul, which was often reflected in nature. Romantic period artists did not simply paint what they saw in a landscape but painted the way they felt from the landscape. Artists were free to be creative, harnessing inspiration from their dreams and their consciousness to illustrate fantastic figures or troubled landscapes. Here is our selection of the 12 most famous Romanticism paintings.

In an order that sets a strong precedent for keeping books on public school library shelves, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida has upheld the freedom to read in Penguin Random House v. Gibson. Filed in August 2024, the lawsuit challenges key provisions of Florida House Bill 1069, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in May 2023 and purports to bar “pornographic” materials and content that “depicts or describes sexual content” from school and classroom libraries.

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So, the question I pose today is: “What do you do with your best work?” My back-up hard drives overflow with photographs. I tend to keep everything – the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Hidden among them are some hidden gems. Do they deserve better than their banishment to my neglected megabytes of photographic storage?

George got involved with car painting early, which he won a prize in the custom car class, Sports Mild Custom. Being a perfectionist, this man became very good in every avenue of his job. Details, names of the paints he used and the procedure and effects as well as his mistakes, are given. One feels like they are in the shop with George! Read The Auto-body Repair Man by George Phillips  - Link - Home

A new chapter begins for Kelly Keating and Alexandria Murphree as they open The Plot Twist, a charming fusion of bookstores and boutiques co-owned by the mother-daughter duo. The Plot Twist, located at 4400 N. Big Spring St. Suite C-28, hosted its grand opening Friday. It’s a dream come true for Murphree to open a bookstore, while Keating has always wanted to open a boutique. The duo decided to unite their visions, which culminated in a bookstore with a twist.