Mail Bag

Today's Mail Bag is brought to you by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec featuring a painting he did when he was only 17 years old of his father Count Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec Driving His Mail-Coach. To my knowledge Henri's father was not a mailman so there must be some hidden message in this image. If any one knows why he painted his father driving a mail coach please let us know.

We have had some fabulous mail this week. First, I want to share with you a wonderful email we received from E1 in Melbourne which has put a huge smile on the face on what we call Team Gaal. The acronym Gaal stands for our purpose in writing the blog which is: Gaining an Appreciation of Art through Life.

Here is the email from E1 in Melbourne.

Hello Anne, and Caroline,

During the evening of Women’s Day I made the wrong decision in watching the television programme ‘Sixty Minutes’- a programme I have not looked at for years as I do not like the hosts, nor the contents: the times they had some interesting content has long gone.

The programme was on the Conavirus 19, and it left me angry with myself for watching it and it also left me with a miserable feeling.

As it is not my habit to just sit and be sad I realised I had not read the blog of the day.

And I am somewhat late telling you this, but felt I had to let you know how much I enjoyed the blog celebrating International Women's Day. The stories of the women who did these beautiful paintings and their individual stories were fantastic. I spent some lovely hours studying it all and felt like a renewed person when I finished.

It is lovely to receive your blog every day, it has become a very valued gift I look forward to.

Thank you for the pleasure you spread around - very valuable in this difficult world.

E (name provided)

Following on from this delightful and most gratifying email was a fabulous photo taken by my cousin Colin Morris who provided us with the photos of the 2019 Archibald, Sulman, Wynne and Young Archies. Colin wanted to be part of our Bee Week posts and thought we would enjoy his remarkable photo.

Colin is a member of the Camberwell Camera Club and won photo of the month with his bee image. It has also been submitted to the VAPS (Victorian Association of Photographic Societies) which I hope he wins. For camera enthusiasts here are the photographic details Colin used to produce his stunning photo.

We also received from D in Bendigo a video on bees and Beechworth Honey which I can assure you is delicious.

And from M in Coburg in response to Caroline's post on ReVerse Butcher a multi-disciplinary artist -

Oh well done Caroline- the post today was wonderful!! I loved the way you wove together poetry, art, music, history, sadness, recovery, immersion & commitment - oh & those wonderful characters!! Thank you!! M

The next item concerns people who want to use the Search Function on my website particularly to check out the content of our past blog posts. I forgot to mention yesterday when I was giving you a guided tour around my website and blog posts that the search magnifying button is not available on mobile phones and small tablets.

If you want to search my website from a phone/tablet you can get to the search function by googling annenewman.com.au/search which will take you directly to the search page on my site.

An Update For Twitter and Facebook followers

Last week we launched a new account anArt4Life which will run parallel to my regular accounts. We will continue to upload to all my accounts the daily post from the blog. However in the future it is anticipated that anArt4Life will take over from my personal accounts as it will be soley dedicated to our purpose of Gaining an Appreciation of Art through Life.

PostScript
I have a very dear friend who abhors social media but remains a dedicated reader of our blog posts. This is a special thank you to all of the non social media subscribers who remain loyal to following us directly. We love you and value you above all our other followers. It is you we have in mind each day when we write. It is you who send in mail bag correspondence. It is you we consider our family. Thank you for joining us in discovering the world of art in life or is it the world of life in art. Either way we are having fun and hoping that we make your day just that little bit more enjoyable just like E1 in Melbourne expressed so thoughtfully.