LAWRENCE RUSS: Soul, Art, and Society
Archives: The Spirit and Reality
“The Friend Who May Not Seem a Friend” – The Cat and the Fire, Post 2 of 3
I wrote to you about the story of the cat at the heart of this photograph, but why is the cat wreathed in flames, and why don’t they consume him? I’ll respond to that now, not with pretended analysis or explanation, but with a kind of “Biography of Fire.” . . .
“The Friend Who May Not Seem a Friend” – The Cat and the Fire, Post 1 of 3
To understand why I show you this carved cat in flames, you need to know that my childhood was plagued by sweat-through-the-night terrors, terrors that could take hold even in daytime. . .
Christmas Reports on Weather of the Soul from Charles Dickens (God bless ‘im!) and Me
As some of you knew, we in the Northeast received warnings through all kinds of media in the early part of this week about the likelihood that a powerful Nor’Easter (gee, wonder why they call it that?) might be hitting us sometime on Wednesday, December 16. Naturally, my wife and I, after dinner on that […]
A Pre-Christmas Christmas Card
A few days ago, I wrote an e-mail to one of my best friends, Rich Armstrong, about a new photograph of mine, which you see above, “The Friend Who Dies So His Friends Can Live (Golgotha and the Tomb).” I’ve known Rich for close to twenty years now, and he was one of my early […]
The Cage of the “Surreal” – Part 2 of 2
I recently had three of my photographs chosen for an exhibition called “Strange Times” at the Atlanta Photography Group Gallery . That exhibition was conceived partly with the pandemic in mind. Yet none of my selected images was made since the start of the pandemic, and none was generated by a dream or even a waking fantasy.
The Cage of the “Surreal” – Post 1 of 2
In my last post, I made some remarks about the falsity of calling certain artworks “surrealistic.” I want to pursue that further here. Am I saying that we should never use the words “surreal” or “surrealistic”? No, but. . . .
A New “Marion” and a New Clue
As the title of this post promises, here is the photograph that just last week joined my ongoing, award-winning “Marion under the Moon” series. Its title is “Dream of the Playground Melting into Night.” Several friends of mine, seeing it for the first time, have ha wildly differing emotional reactions to it . . . One male friend said that the image provides “mysteries upon mysteries”. . . .
“I wish somehow. . . .”
Dear Readers, I’m sorry to be so late with this “next” post. But you all know that sometimes we seem to be having even more difficulties than we usually do. And sometimes the world seems to give us even more causes for grief than it commonly does.
“Blessed are those who mourn . . . who thirst after righteousness . . . the merciful . . . the pure in heart . . . the peacemakers. . .”
Today, I read a front-page article in The New York Times about how the “culture wars,” the political divisions in this country, are causing conflicts within church congregations, and driving many people away from their places of worship. The article took as its central illustration the case of a small Baptist church in the Alabama […]
Three More Clues, Turned in Another Direction
My earlier sets of clues had to do, you might say, with the nature of reality, of being. This set has a different emphasis, though the same ground. This one looks toward decisions and actions.The first clue is a Zen story that I told in an earlier post: A Zen teacher, Nan-ch’uan, stands before a […]