The Leveret

Monday, January 16, 2023

Murmuration

Image: “Murmuration” by Babs Pease.

See also the previous posts:
• All Will Be Well
• Souls Alike
• The Beltane Hare
• Be Silent and Listen
• Don’t Let Them Tame You
• Up With the Larks
• A Husk of Hares
• Hare and Hedgerow
• All Is Enchanted

Saturday, January 14, 2023

Mirror Dancer

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

See also the previous posts:
• Pole
• Face Your Darkness
• Trio
• Ballerino I | II | III
• Dancing Hare

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Hare Tumbler

Image: Artist and photographer unknown.

See also the previous posts:
• Hare Décor – March 12, 2020
• Hare Décor – January 25, 2017

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Phallic Mating

Notes the website of The Man2Man Alliance . . .

For tens of thousands of years, the phallus was seen not simply as something to insert in a hole to relieve sexual tension or to impregnate a woman, but was worshipped as the sacred symbol of male creative power.

Representations of the phallus were everywhere, in temples and festivals, on street corners and in front of houses, mounted on chariots in triumphal processions, even in the wind chimes or tintinnabula of Roman homes [left].

Men in the ancient world were surrounded by images of the sacred phallus because male sexual energy was revered and treated with awe. . . . It’s essential for contemporary men to recapture that sense of the phallus as sacred.

For if we understand that the phallus is sacred, we’ll realize that it’s not to be misused to spread disease or for empty, meaningless sex, but rather to connect physically with the creative power of another man in the awesome and cosmic act of phallic mating, the ultimate celebration of the male-male bond.

– Source

See also the previous posts:
• Phallus
• The Divine Masculine Principle
• Spiritual Phallicism
• “Downtown Heaven”
• Hard
• Not a Weapon or a Mere Tool
• Reaching Out
• Body and Soul
• Buddies
• Setting Free
• Sweet Release
• Animal Energies
• The Body: A Holy Place of Romp and Renewal

Images: Subjects and photographers unknown.

Sunday, January 8, 2023

Running Hare

Image: Photographer unknown.

Wednesday, January 4, 2023

Threshold

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

See also the previous posts:
• Bel Homme – November 8, 2017
• Bel Homme – December 8, 2013
• Morning Light – August 2, 2011

Tuesday, January 3, 2023

All Will Be Well

Let go completely, at the deepest, most primal and fundamental level – there is no “how” other than that. Dive deep enough within, and there it will be. The letting go will happen, and there will be no way back. All will be well, and more well than can be imagined. Nothing will have changed, except everything.

― Adyashant

Art: Angela Harding.

Monday, January 2, 2023

A 10-Minute Ultimate Beginners Workout

The following video by fitness trainer Joe Wicks (aka The Body Coach) is a “quick 10-minute ultimate beginners workout.” It’s low-impact and perfect for anyone who is completely new to exercise or getting back into it after a time away. Its aim is to gently build back both one’s level of fitness and confidence.

It’s also a great way to start the new year, especially if you’ve allowed your regular exercise regime to go by the wayside over the recent holiday period. So have at it!

See also the previous posts:
• Joe
• An “Ultimate Beginners” Workout
• A “Super Beginner” Workout
• “5 Minute Abs” with The Body Coach
• The Body Coach’s “7 Days of Sweat Challenge” – Day 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
• Jordan Yeoh’s 10 Minute Bodyweight Workout
• Funk Roberts’ 10 Minute Bodyweight Workout

Related Off-site Link:
• Joe’s Official YouTube Channel

Thursday, December 29, 2022

The Art of Avel de Knight

Notes Wikipedia:

Avel de Knight (1923-1995) was an African-American artist, art educator, and art critic. His works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the University of Richmond Museums.

De Knight was born in New York. His birth year has been given as 1921, 1923, 1925, 1931, and 1933. His parents immigrated to the United States from Barbados and Puerto Rico. He is the younger brother of René DeKnight.

De Knight studied art at the Pratt Institute from 1941-1942. He joined the Army and served in a segregated unit until the end of World War II. In 1946, he moved to Paris where he used the G.I. Bill to attend the École des Beaux-Arts, Académie de la Grande Chaumière, and the Académie Julian.

De Knight painted watercolors and often practiced the gouache painting technique. He taught at the Art Students League of New York and the National Academy School of Fine Arts.

Above: “Angel: The Voice” (1984), pastel on paper, 15 x 15 in.

Visual artist and art professor Stephen J. Tyson, cousin of Avel de Knight and curator of his estate, shared the following in a conversation on the Style Free Podcast on April 9, 2022, the 99th anniversary of de Knight’s birth.

One of the things you find in Avel’s work is the influence of people like Gustave Moreau, the late nineteenth century French symbolist painter who [like de Knight] worked with pastels. Avel was [also] inspired by the life of the mind, of the imagination. He became friends with the writer Jean Cocteau who was also very close friends with Picasso. So being in this milieu of artists who were traversing boundaries – not staying confined conceptually, visually – I think that this spirit of freedom is something that Avel embraced and then exuded through his work; not right away [but] the seeds were sown in France [in the 1940s] and they would later manifest in the mid to late 1960s in his work.

Above: “Arab” (1967), commercial print, 18 x 22 in.

The erotic drawings featured in this post were created by de Knight in the 1940s. Most are from the estate of his close friend, the French artist Julien Outin (1923-2005).

Very little has been written or discussed about de Knight’s personal life and the ways in which his sexuality informed and influenced his art. This is a great pity as it would add much to our appreciation and understanding of his artistic legacy.

Above: “André” (1967), oil on paper, 13½ x 12 in.

Notes the University of Richmond Museums:

De Knight’s mostly figurative art has been called poetic, lyrical, and symbolist in style. Dream imagery reappears as frequently as classical and African art references. His veils of colors, created by various media, suggest movement, atmosphere, and emotion in these history-laden works.

Above: Untitled (1982), oil on paper, 8 x 8 in.

Above: “Sacred Stones” (1994), pastel on paper, 39.75 x 29 in.

Wrote de Knight: “My ‘mirage’ paintings incorporate within the spatial confines of their ever-receding horizons symbols of personal imagery in which the human element plays the dominant role. . . . The emerging painting magically coalesces and breathes a life of its own.”

Above: “Two Youths” (c. 1950s), mixed media on paper.

Above: Untitled (c. 1974), pen and ink wash on paper, 9½ × 10½ in.

Writes Stephen J. Tyson:

If we want to have an understanding of [de Knight’s] work, we must allow silence to be an acknowledged part of our exploratory journey. De Knight’s work invites us to take this step. It seems to ask us if we are willing to go beyond viewing his skillful technique as an end in itself. Are we willing to see it as a vehicle through which the artist shapes his silence? As we continue to explore the artist’s work, we begin to see an outward continuity of common features: the contemplative figures, deserts, angels, radiant lights, plants, seascapes, shells, masks, and pyramids.

. . . The pyramid, in addition to being a marvel of technical skill in engineering, was designed to house deceased royalty. This particular structure of African antiquity would later become a recurring image in [de Knight’s] Mirage Series. He regarded the mirage experience as involving the advancement toward an unreachable or unattainable goal or ideal. The pyramid itself represents an ideal. With this form, together with the reduction of human presence and the atmosphere of mystery, he appears to be grappling with the themes of death and eternal life. They would become more explicit in his work toward the end of his life.