Painting

[Art] John Francis Dooley – Ulysses

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

As I am currently teaching The Odyssey to my students this semester, I thought this piece of artwork would be worth sharing.

If you have ever heard the song Ulysses by the Australian world music and darkwave band Dead Can Dance, you hear John Francis Dooley being named as the protagonist of the song. There is no information about who Dooley is, and the band have been rather quiet about the meaning of the song, but a person using this name posting this painting, perhaps a digital one, based on the lyrics of the song. If there is a John Francis Dooley out there (and he sounds like he would be a perfect character for James Joyce’s book of the same name), I’d love to know more about him.

[Art] Happy 164th Birthday John Singer Sargent — Waldina

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LQZtHd3SJfo%3Fversion%3D3%26rel%3D1%26fs%3D1%26autohide%3D2%26showsearch%3D0%26showinfo%3D1%26iv_load_policy%3D1%26wmode%3Dtransparent

Today is the 164th birthday of the artist John Singer Sargent. The renewed interest in his works could be attributed to the huge popularity of Downton Abbey and it’s highlighting and romanticizing of the Edwardian era, but his works can also hold their own. They depict Edwardian subjects, but in a bit more of a […]

via Happy 164th Birthday John Singer Sargent — Waldina

[Art] Sister Wendy Beckett, RIP

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

Whether it was discussing Caravaggio or nudes in paintings, Sister Wendy always did so with authority and a good laugh.  She was a jovial presence in my younger days, when PBS really offered wonderful educational programming.

May the good Sister rest in the Bosom of Abraham now, and I, along with many others, thank her for proving that one could be devout and still have not only no fear, but a passionate love for art and culture.

PBS offers a short biography of her life here.

[Music] Various Artists – Decay, Death and Darkness – Aural Visions Of Beksiński’s Art

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment


Zdzisław Beksiński was a Polish multimedia artist whose utopian realist works stood in stark contrast to his rather jovial personal demeanor.  He may have been an artists whose work could scare the hell out of you, but he was also quite a decent man who had a fondness for classical music, as well as some rock (his son, Tomasz, was a noted DJ who committed suicide in 1999).

Once again, the brilliant folks at Eighth Tower Records, a subgroup of Unexplained Sounds, have released a compilation whose subject inspired some of the most brutally dark ambient music artists active to come up with some bleak aural monstrosities.

[Music] Letha Rodman Melchior – Edymion/MWCIE

/ Rudy Carrera / Leave a comment

There’s little worse, from a musical standpoint, than discovering an artist whose work gleams brightly after she has left this mortal coil, and from cancer, that cruel killer. Letha Rodman Melchior was a painter of some renown as well as a composer of fine experimental music. She hailed from Durham, North Carolina, and recorded for Siltbreeze Records, with whom she released two absolutely stunning albums: Handbook For Mortals from 2013, and Shimmering Ghosts, released posthumously in 2015.