Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul. ~Alice Walker

Summer wildflowers by Mary Dipnall

Mary Dipnall says that she would rather be sitting in a meadow full of wild flowers, sketching with the sun on her back than anywhere else. 

Born in Portsmouth in 1936, her childhood and subsequent painting style was much influenced by family picnics and holidays in England’s beautiful West Country. Perhaps it is Mary Dipnall’s lack of formal art training or her pastoral lifestyle which infuses her work with such colourful freedom and warmth. Whatever it is that makes her work inspired, it strikes a chord with all those who love and value the English countryside. Following her marriage and the birth of her two sons, Mary Dipnall found herself turning to painting full time, rediscovering her love for the natural world through her paintings. She gradually began to specialise in wonderful representations of wild flowers, and in 1980 held her first exhibition in London. Since then, Mary Dipnall has exhibited on a regular basis in Great Britain, such is the demand for her original work. Her distinctive style of painting guarantees an unique, colourful and decorative quality in each of her startling paintings.

Our greatest glory is not in never falling…

but in rising every time we fall.”

— Confucius

Welcome to my World )))

I left you in the morning…

I left you in the morning,
And in the morning glow,
You walked a way beside me
To make me sad to go.
Do you know me in the gloaming,
Gaunt and dusty gray with roaming?
Are you dumb because you know me not,
Or dumb because you know?

All for me And not a question
For the faded flowers gay
That could take me from beside you
For the ages of a day?
They are yours, and be the measure
Of their worth for you to treasure,
The measure of the little while
That I’ve been long away.

It was a long time ago.

It was a long time ago.
I have almost forgotten my dream.
But it was there then,
In front of me,
Bright like a sun—
My dream.
And then the wall rose,
Rose slowly,
Slowly,
Between me and my dream.
Rose until it touched the sky—
The wall.
Shadow.
I am black.
I lie down in the shadow.
No longer the light of my dream before me,
Above me.
Only the thick wall.
Only the shadow.
My hands!
My dark hands!
Break through the wall!
Find my dream!
Help me to shatter this darkness,
To smash this night,
To break this shadow
Into a thousand lights of sun,
Into a thousand whirling dreams
Of sun!

Langston Hughes

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words …

and that which cannot remain silent.”

— Victor Hugo

People think they know you.

People think they know you. They think they know how you’re handling a situation. But the truth is no one knows. No one knows what happens after you leave them, when you’re lying in bed or sitting over your breakfast alone and all you want to do is cry or scream. They don’t know what’s going on inside your head—the mind-numbing cocktail of anger and sadness and guilt. This isn’t their fault. They just don’t know. And so they pretend and they say you’re doing great when you’re really not. And this makes everyone feel better. Everybody but you.

(c) William H. Woodwell Jr