Art Deciphered

“The shattering of a heart when being broken is the loudest quiet ever.”
― Carroll Bryant

Art by Nicolas Martin

The earth laughs in flowers.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away.”
― Frida Kahlo

🎨 Frida Kahlo (2016) by Mathieu Laca

“My only relief is to sleep. When I'm sleeping, I'm not sad, I'm not angry, I'm not lonely, I'm nothing.”
― Jillian Medoff

Art by Serge Marshennikov

“You won't find the same person twice, not even in the same person.”
― Mahmoud Darwish

“If pain must come, may it come quickly. Because I have a life to live, and I need to live it in the best way possible. If he has to make a choice, may he make it now. Then I will either wait for him or forget him.”
― Paulo Coelho

Art by Daniela Krtsch

“I wish I were a girl again, half savage and hardy, and free... Why am I so changed?”
― Emily Brontë

Art by Monica Castanys

“You fool – you are afraid of being alone with you own mind. You just better learn to know yourself, to make sure decisions before it is too late. Your room is not your prison. You are.”
― Sylvia Plath

Art by Mustafa Özel

‘Communication is the greatest destroyer of talent. It makes everybody like everybody else.’ ‘True genius like Idi Amin, Hi**er and Bukowski will become less and less.’
— Charles Bukowski

“Aren’t you tired of this loneliness?” “But deep down aren’t we all lonely? Remember, we come alone into this world and die all alone. In the end it is yourself, and yourself only, against the world! And you always lose. No matter what! That is the sad truth…”
― Ryan Gelpke

“People say you can lose yourself in love, but they don’t tell you that you can lose each other, too, that you can kiss without feeling and you can have s*x without connecting and you can convince yourself that the love you have is not enough of the things you need. You can be alone while together.”
― Jamie Varon

“I have learned that to be with those I like is enough”
― Walt Whitman

“Each time you happen to me all over again.”
— Edith Wharton

“The worst thing about loneliness is that it brings one face to face with oneself.”
― Mary Balogh

“Sometimes exhaustion is not a result of too much time spent on something, but of knowing that in its place, no time is spent on something else.”
― Joyce Rachelle

Art by William Oxer

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more”
― Lord Byron

Elizabeth Gadd Photography

"Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."
— Aristotle

Art by Rozanne Hermelyn Di Silvestro

Igor Sava is an Italian watercolorist known for his luminous cityscapes and waterscapes. Born in Moldova, the artist moved to Rome and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. Italy always has its way to inspire artists and it helped Sava elevate his artistic passion. Being a traveler, he has recreated a lot of famous cities in his canvas - Paris, Barcelona, Dubai and Saint Petersburg to name a few.

He is one of the founders of the watercolor school “Aquarelle Art Studio”. He spends his time painting and teaching watercolor in Rome and around the world.

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
― Henri Nouwen

Art by Ron Hicks

Blair Atherholt is an American artist known for his still life paintings. His dark palette traditional artworks bring out the elements of fantasy and imagination making him one of a kind. Ironically his traditional paintings have a slight touch of modernism and this approach along with his skillful precision elevates his objects to new depths of art.

“How many times have people used a pen or paintbrush because they couldn’t pull the trigger?”
― Virginia Woolf

“At some point you have to realize that some people can stay in your heart but not in your life.” – Tara Westover

Art by Aldo Balding

“Love doesn't make the world go round, Love is what makes the ride worthwhile!”
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning

It’s in the quiet I miss you most when my mind has the chance to wander, and my heart has a moment to remember.
– Lola Lawrence

Art by Luca Morelli

Did you feel that?
You just missed
A perfectly simple
And beautiful moment
Because you were worrying
About the next moment.

-Right Now-

~ J. Warren Welch

"I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world inside you."
— Haruki Murakami

"𝗛𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗜"

“When words run dry,
he does not try,
nor do I.

We are on par.

He just is,
I just am
and we just are”

― 𝐿𝒶𝓃𝑔 𝐿𝑒𝒶𝓋

In “The Gospel of Nicodemus” (a.k.a. Acts of Pilate), Mary is described to have fainted by the sight of the crucifixion. This inspired many Medieval artists and is often seen in many paintings between the period of 1300 and 1500. The different scenes where the Swoon of the Virgin is shown includes Jesus leaving Mary for his final trip to Jerusalem, he meeting her as he carries his cross on the way to Calvary, the crucifixion, and finally when he is taken down from his cross.

However as swoon of Mary is not found in the Four Gospels, these paintings became quite controversial around the 16th century and many senior churchmen argued that a fainting Mary is incompatible with how the Gospels describe her standing beneath the cross. The controversy was short-lived, and it was probably because the Franciscans were pushing forward the idea that Mary is co-redemptrix (co-redeemer).

The mystics like Saint Anne Catherine Emmerich tell us that Mary asked God to make her feel whatever her son is feeling. When Jesus bids her goodbye on his last journey to Jerusalem, his heart must be breaking having to leave his mother in death. Since Christ loved her perfectly, his grief was perfect, and she felt what he was feeling. She felt his broken heart. Again, when she met Christ as he carried the cross along the alleyways of Jerusalem, his heart was crushed once again as he saw his mother’s heart pierced with a sword. She felt his sorrow. But there is no better explanation for her swoon than the crucifixion itself, for when Christ breathed his last and died, she felt that too. It was no swoon; she felt what it was to die. She was dying with her son!

Thus the “swoon” of Mary should not be seen as a weakness, but as a willing participation in her son’s Passion – all the way to his death. And thereby co-redemptrix.

“I was ready to love the whole world, but no one understood me, and I learned to hate.”
― Mikhail Lermontov

Art by Malcolm T. Liepke

“The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”
— Jacques Yves Cousteau

“What if I get hurt?” she whispered into his jacket. He pulled back so she could see him, his eyes solemn, soft, sincere on hers. His face dipped closer and he pressed a soft kiss to her mouth. “Then, I’ll kiss your scars.”
― RuNyx

“He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It’s his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.”
― Markus Zusak

Art by Michael Carson

“The worst part of holding the memories is not the pain. It’s the loneliness of it. Memories need to be shared.”
— Lois Lowry

Art by Taeil Kim

“Madness and chaos are self-destructing but over thinking is the suicide.”
― Robert M. Drake

Art by Nickie Zimov

“Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once.”
― Audrey Hepburn

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
― John Steinbeck

Art by Daniela Krtsch

“You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Art Photography by Roberto De Mitri

“It feels like the world is going to explode when I kiss you.”
— Alex Light