North Light Studios

I guess the title makes my subject pretty obvious. And I have to tell you, there are about a million statues (sounds like an exaggeration, but doesn't feel like one) that depict both Roman and Greek mythology. They are my favorite kind because they tell a story. There is so much emotion and feeling involved, not to mention the constant themes of falling in love and resisting brute lust. We have always liked our dramas - even hundreds of years ago.  Perseus and Medusa, by Antonio Canova, from study.com Antonio Canova is one of my favorites. Above is Perseus and Medusa, currently on display at The Met in New York. When I see this I think of the more modern telling involving Percy Jackson. My absolute favorite Canova is this:  Cupid and Psyche, by Antonio Canova, from The Louvre In this interpretation of Cupid and Psyche I see the most caring and intense love. It's difficult not to like this statue. When Mike and I went to the Hermitage we had to wait a while to ge...

Halfway through the year and I finally decided how to theme the blog. Yeah, I'm sorry about being MIA; I'm even more unfocused than normal this year. So I'm sitting at my computer and thinking, "what the heck am I'm going to focus on?" Since I don't know how to focus anymore, the answer came in a moment of non-focusing. Subjects. As in, things. People. Figures of a certain sort. For instance, in order to ease into this momentum (did you catch that oxymoron there?), I'm doing angels today. Why? Because I know them. A lot of them. Angels represent something different for each of us. They can be spiritual, or emotional, or representative of something we're looking for whether it's peace and tranquility or the knowledge that we are only human but strive to be more. And here they are, in no particular order. The Stagliano Angel This angel, by Giulio Monteverde, guards the Oneto family monument at the Stagliano Cemetery in Genoa, Italy. I...

It seems that every year, about half-way through, I lull. There is a huge gap in my blogs from about May to the end of the year. And this year, I didn't even start until March. Is it any wonder that my email used to be slacker_a? While scrolling through favorite statuary, I came across Apollo and Daphne , and my eyes lit up. Maybe this story is so intriguing to me because I have a sister named Daphne. Or maybe the statue itself is what drew me in. Apollo, who has been hit by those tricky arrows that belong to Eros (a.k.a. Cupid), wants Daphne so badly that he won't give in to her refusals. Daphne detests Apollo, and begs her father for help in getting away from him. The way I see the story - and many others as well - is that Apollo was about to deprive Daphne of her virtue, and so her father turns her into a Laurel tree. She is still a living thing, and though not a human, has escaped Apollo's grasp. From Wikipedia This sculpture by Bernini is, in effect, enthrallin...