scribbles, notes, dispatches
Roman Period, 130-161 C.E.
Encaustic on wood panel with gilt stucco
This portrait of an unknown woman… was meant to be placed over the face of a mummy. (An earlier mummy mask, of Meret-it-es, is in the first gallery.)…
From Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins museum.
The artist painted it using the encaustic technique. Mixing organic colors in hot beeswax, he applied the hot paint to a specially prepared wooden board.
Said earlier mummy mask, roughly 400 years older:
Red abstract markings, discovered in several Spanish caves, are old, and in fact were seemingly made by hominins long before H. sapiens moved into Europe. The red sinuous marking and system of squares and lines near the middle of this photo are purported to have been made by Neanderthals (other images, depicting animals and present adjacent to these markings, were seemingly created more recently by H. sapiens individuals). Image: (c) P. Saura.
HT: Tetrapod Zoology
So let’s back up a bit.
The goal is to write something everyday. To get the juices flowing, to slow down and look around the place and enjoy it, darn it.
Well here’s what’s not needed: empty words piled high with digital ink, opinions shouted into the void, or a vehicle for my ego to increase its already substantial propensity for self-regard.
What could be useful: a travelogue, a place to collect curious items of note, good things, true things, beautiful things. A means of exercising the mind. Small, tentative steps toward wisdom.
So with that – enough preamble and navel-gazing!
A commonplace blog.
A stationary bicycle for my mind.
A depository of words, curiosities, flotsam, jetsam.
Stay tuned.
Lernings 