Loose Leaf Notes

1. How Did a Grasshopper End Up Trapped in a Vincent van Gogh Painting? New research offers insights on “Olive Trees” (1889), including the story of the hapless insect trapped on its thickly painted surface. The insect, which is barely visible to the naked eye, was probably dead by the time it landed on van Gogh’s canvas. More HERE.

2. I’ve always liked Van Gogh’s flowers more than his potato eaters and his flaming flowers that brightly blaze and swirling clouds in violet haze, as Don McClean sings about in his song Vincent. -More from I’ve Always Wanted to Walk Into a Painting and Live There HERE.

3. Immersion art. Where does the paint end and I start?

4. Senator Tim Kaine was in town last week for a Habitat for Humanity ground-breaking ceremony at the Presbyterian Church of Floyd. He had injured his foot in a camping stove accident. It was bandaged and he wore flip flops.  “I’ve never worn flip flops into a sanctuary before. I wonder if anyone else connected to Christianity wore sandals…if it was good enough for him…” he explained when he spoke at the podium.

5. The first thing I said to Senator Tim Kaine when I saw him was ‘did you hurt your foot flatfoot dancing?’ because the last time I saw him at the Floyd Country Store I tried to get him to dance but he wouldn’t. See HERE.

6. So why does Ted Lasso, who is supposed to be from Kansas, have a southern accent?

7. “I’ll have a better understanding of why in a year and an even better one in two, and an even greater one in five, and it’ll go from being, you know, a book of my life to becoming a chapter to a paragraph to a line to a word to a doodle.” – Jason Sudeikis on the break-up of his marriage to Olivia Wilde

8. After we saw the Van Gogh Immersion Art show in Charlotte, we met with a friend of Joe’s for coffee who was from the Netherlands like Van Gogh was.  He and wasn’t into seeing the Immersion show because of the commercialization of the artist, who only sold one painting when he was alive and apparently tried to commit suicide by shooting himself and died of the infection it caused.

9. I, on the other hand, love Immersion Art. it’s like a new take on the ‘60s light shows, or the best way to do psychedelics these days. Check out THIS post from our 2018 Immersion Art experience with Gustav Klimt in Paris.

10. Check out THIS take of walking into a painting.

11. “A Walk-in-Painting is a large painting (my 1st was done on an old garage door). I cut a hole in the painting so that people can enter it. On the inside, I construct a space that reflects the aesthetics and ideas of the entrance painting. This includes the ceiling and floor; it is inclusive.”

12. Vincent’s last words were: “The sadness will last forever.”

13. We look for seed pods to blow / even though we know / our deepest wishes / have already come true – Read A Friend Up the Hill in its entirety HERE.

__________Thirteen Thursday