extremelycrafty

I have spent this weekend sewing and visiting the Waterhouse exhibit at the Royal Academy of the Arts. There is a major retrospective of his works there. He had been an academician at the turn of the century. His work is very romantic, often including knights being seduced by fairies, sirens calling sailors into the water, mermaids brushing their hair, pagan gods, and Green mythological characters. His work also was inspired by the poetry of Keats and Tennyson.

His work was so beautiful, I went around it twice. Like the sailors in the pictures, I didn't want to tear my eyes away from such beauty.

I would be the first to say that art should not just be about pretty pictures to hang on walls, but I recently went to another Summer Exhibition preview evening at the Royal Academy and this was the best work of art there -

The dessert table. The champagne table was pretty good too, but couldn't sneak a shot of that.

The Summer Exhibition is supposed to be a showing of the public works of art alongside work of the Academicians. However, the work of art from the public is extremely limited. Believe me, I've tried to get in. Not bitter or anything. I think the Royal Academy asks for public submissions because they receive a non-refundable while the acceptance is like 1%.

Only for my dear readers, I snuck my camera out and took a few shots of the art. This is a monkey picture scrawled by Tracy Emin which seems to have sold like crazy (indicated by the red dots). Now come on, how can that compare to the Waterhouse works that happen to be in the next room?

Thank you Clare of Clare's Crafts for the lovely blog award, but I will refrain from passing it on (and including it on my site permanently) because I am having difficulty keeping up with working, blogging, and crafting. Just wanted to mention Clare because it was reading her site that gave me the inspiration to raise money for the Royal Marsden. Check out her blog to read her story.