Patricia A. Bender

"...I used to slip into the Louvre at the luncheon hour... I think I should have gone mad and killed myself if it hadn't been that I could go there, where nobody knew me and nobody stared at me, and be alone with my friends. It was rest and peace. It gave me courage. It wasn't so much the great well-known masterpieces that helped me, it was the smaller, shyer pictures that no one noticed, and I felt they were pleased that I looked at them. I felt that nothing really mattered so very much, because everything passed. Patience! Patience! That's what I learnt there. And I felt that above all the horror and the misery and cruelty of the world, there was something that helped you bear it, something that was greater and more important than all that, the spirit of man and the beauty he created. Is it really strange that that little picture I showed you this morning should mean so much to me?"
~ from Christmas Holiday by W. Somerset Maugham



I try to make beautiful little pictures.