“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.”

The story behind my painting “The Christmas Bridge”

A few years ago we had a unexpected snow storm on Christmas Eve.

Two weeks in the making, we had already sent invitations in advance to a host of our closest friends.  “Join us for a very special Christmas dinner!” we promised.

The storm as it turned was insurmountable and dangerous and so it became impossible for our friends to reach us.

And so we sat, the two of us, with a king’s ransom of dinner, lights, music, desserts and unopened gifts – feeling, well a bit empty. Our special evening didn’t seem quite so, well, special.

We sat, eggnogs calming, candles burning, the blue twilight casting something magical across the little bridge out the front window.

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The Christmas Bridge (a painting, PRINTS Here) – Douglas Moorezart, copyright 2016, all rights reserved

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Nothing had changed really. The bridge into our house stood steadfast, waiting for our guests to arrive, not seeming concerned about the turn of events in the slightest. And it would, it promised, continue waiting each and every day. That was its purpose, its reason for being after all.

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“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

― Eric Hoffer

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That evening we agreed that this small unassuming bridge represented, to us, friendship. Friendship which remains true whatever challenges come along.

I wish for each and every one of you (who have so kindly blessed me with your comments and visits) successful arithmetic this season. That you can find blessings to count. Perhaps even some that at first don’t seem especially so.

— Douglas

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“A city is more than a place in space, it is a drama in time”

― Patrick Geddes

Emerald City Skyline – D. Moorezart, c 2016, all rights reserved

“beauty lies between”

Archiscape – D. Moorezart, c 2016, all rights reserved

 

“…beauty lies between the extremities of order and complexity

― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

“…the two most beautiful words in the English language”

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“Summer afternoon – summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

Henry James

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“If a June night could talk…”

 

 “If a June night could talk, it would probably
boast it invented romance”

~Bern Williams

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Beauty Sleep – Douglas Moorezart, c 2016, all rights reserved

“Never mind searching for the person you are…”

Aspirations – Douglas Moorezart, c 2016, all rights reserved

“Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person
you aspire to be.”

~Robert Brault

“…we’ve no money for butter”

“…When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, With a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me, And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves, And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter”

— Jenny Joseph

Purple – Douglas Moorezart, c 2015

“a parallel life”

“a parallel life, as dreams shadow

waking but never intersect it”

— Edmund White

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Parallel – Douglas Moorezart, copyright 2017, all rights reserved

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“it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.”

Quiet Moments – Douglas Moorezart, copyright 2016, all rights reserved

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“All of our great traditions, religious, contemplative and artistic, say that you must learn how to be alone – and have a relationship with silence. It is difficult, but it can start with just the tiniest quiet moment.”

— David Whyte

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After the Tourists are Gone

“Once you have traveled…the mind can never break off from the journey.”

― Pat Conroy

 

After the Tourists Are Gone – D. Moorezart, c 2016

“Once you have traveled…the mind can never break off from the journey.”

― Pat Conroy

“We have not long to love. A night. A day…”

We Have Not Long, Douglas Moorezart, copyright 2016, all rights reserved

“So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day….”
― Tennessee Williams, The Collected Poems

 

Daily Illuminations

Daily Illuminations – painting, Douglas Moorezart, c 2017, all rights reserved < click image for prints >

“What is the meaning of life? That was all- a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years, the great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead, there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one.”

― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Spanish Harlem

Spanish Harlem – Douglas Moorezart, c 2017, all rights reserved

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There is a rose in Spanish Harlem
A red rose up in Spanish Harlem

It is the special one, it’s never seen the sun
It only comes out when the moon is on the run
And all the stars are gleaming
It’s growing in the street
Right up through the concrete
But soft and sweet and dreaming

– Ben E. King

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“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will …”

Reticent Sunflower – Douglas Moorezart, copyright 2016, all rights reserved

Fine Art Prints Here

“The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.”

– Aldous Huxley

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Between Night and Day

Between Night and Dawn – Douglas Moorezart, c 2016

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” 

-Thomas Jefferson

“Take care of all your memories”

Beneath the Wisteria – Douglas Moorezart, copyright 2016, all rights reserved

“Take care of all your memories.
For you cannot relive them”

— Bob Dylan

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Fine Art Prints Available:

“it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed”

Autumn Afternoon – D. Moorezart, c 2016, all rights reserved

“But when fall comes, kicking summer out … it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.”

― Stephen King, Salem’s Lot

220 Years of Respite

220 Years of Respite – D. Moorezart, copyright 2016, all rights reserved

On my travels along the California coast this year I retreated from the 100 degree heat and the endless, unrelenting freeways into this otherworldly house of worship – the San Luis Rey Mission in Oceanside, California.

Here it is cool and still and with one step past the threshold the outside world simply ceases to exist. Here time stands still and the rarefied ambiance of 220 years takes over my being. One lone man sits in midday prayer before me.

Some time later, my being in balance, I depart through the church doors and, as I do, I recall the opening lyrics of the Elton John song “60 Years On”.

Who’ll walk me down to church when I’m sixty years of age
When the ragged dog they gave me has been ten years in the grave
And señorita plays guitar, plays it just for you
My rosary has broken and my beads have all slipped through.

— Bernie Taupin

“We need hope, the sense of a future”

Blue Hope – Douglas Moorezart, c 2016, all rights reserved

 Prints available here.

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“To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings;

we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning,

understanding, and explanation; we need to see over-all patterns

in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need

freedom (or, at least, the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves,

whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning

technology, or in states of mind that allow us to travel to other worlds,

to rise above our immediate surroundings.”

— Oliver Sacks

“wild, free, spontaneous”

Poppies Nocturne Study – D. Moorezart, c 2016, all rights reserved

“For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant! “

~Edward Abbey

Still Life to Go

Still Life to Go – D. Moorezart, copyright 2016, all rights reserved