Unusual You

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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Today I'm posting a Photoshop piece.  My new goal is to post at least one new piece a week.  This week I happen to be one ahead!

A garden is a complex of aesthetic and plastic intentions; and the plant is, to a landscape artist, not only a plant - rare, unusual, ordinary or doomed to disappearance - but it is also a color, a shape, a volume or an arabesque in itself. 

Roberto Burle Marx

Learning How to Die

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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These photos are of an abandoned building that I believe was a church or a VFW hall.  It's very dilapidated and has been a hangout over the years for homeless people, teenagers who are partying, and gang members.  I loved the day I had here.  There were many rooms and interesting areas to photograph.

Men resemble great deserted palaces: the owner occupies only a few rooms and has closed-off wings where he never ventures. 

Francois Mauriac

Arboretum

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I haven't posted photos in the recent past because I just put in a new 1TB hard drive in my Mac Pro, otherwise known as "Big Papa".  It wasn't difficult, just time-consuming.  So far, so great.  Now I have much increased space, which I need because I have 24,000 photos and 15,000 songs in my itunes library.  The photos for today were taken on my trip to the Getty Museum.  The paint on the arboretum is the only paint on the entire property that's not white.

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. 

Albert Einstein

The Slow Life

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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What could he actually be discovering and creating in his mind?

Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing. 

Dodie Smith

Wither Must I Wander

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I'm encouraging myself to continue my surreal photo montages.  I have a series of these and I am adding to my collection.  I'll be posting these every so often.  

Is there something we have forgotten? Some precious thing we have lost, wandering in strange lands? 

Arna Bontemps

The Perfect Space

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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I always love entering the Getty Museum.  These plants take my breath away.

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it. 

Pierre Bonnard

Keeps Gettin' Better

© copyright Linda Swanson all rights reserved

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For some people it's time for lots of reflection and changes in life. Many times in life we  go through a lot of pain and come out on the other side to know that the change becomes a new kind of adventure.  Here's to the beginning of freedom and remembering exactly who you are.

“The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.” Thomas Merton quotes (American and Trappist Monk t Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey in Trappist, Kentucky, 1915-1968