hey folks! as some of you know, I got all my pets from the Cape Town SPCA. these smelly critters are the loves of my life. please consider giving CT SPCA a donation to help them rescue more smelly critters.
capespca.co.za/donate/
#animalrescue #spca #animalshelters #mydogs #mycats #southafrica
A close-up portrait shows a young Black woman with deep brown skin held in a full-body embrace. Her eyes are softly closed, her lips gently upturned, and her face looks calm, relieved, and safe. A white headband with bold black spots is tied into an oversized bow at the top of her head and her hair is pulled back so her brow, cheekbones, and an ear are visible. Her hands rest across the embrace holding on to the person supporting her. The second figure with her back to us hugs the woman back. She wears a soft hoodie painted in sweeping cool blues, pinks, and yellow and has her dark blond hair in a bun. Their bodies press together closely, creating a sense of warmth and steadiness rather than a sharply defined portrait of two individuals. Behind them, layered greens and olive tones form an abstract background with visible brushwork and softened edges, keeping the scene private and intimate. The title names what the image is doing: support is physical, emotional, and built through presence. By letting the second figure remain partly anonymous and a more sheltering shape than detailed identity, American artist Destiny Dixon (Destiny Ari’e) makes the embrace feel both personal and widely recognizable, like a moment that could belong to many kinds of relationships (partner, friend, family, or even chosen family). The closed eyes matter as they shift the focus from being seen to being cared for and from performance to rest. In her own words, Dixin describes an artistic intention rooted in “nostalgia, tranquility, and beauty,” and she connects her practice to finding serenity and building confidence through making. She also frames her work as capturing life’s meaningful moments like small refuges inside complexity. Read through that lens, “My Support System” becomes a quiet statement of power with tenderness as shelter, and care as something you can lean into without apology.
“My Support System” by Destiny Dixon / Destiny Ari’e (American) - Acrylic on canvas / 2023 - Cedar Rapids Museum of Art (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #DestinyDixon #DestinyArie #artText #CedarRapidsMuseumOfArt #CRMA #ContemporaryArt #BlackArt #BlackArtist
A recipe book opened to a page with text reading: Baloo’s Honey Preserves. Ingredients, Buzzy Bee Honey, Fancy Ants, Pawpaw, Prickly Pear. Method, Use the claw, not the paw. A picture illustrates a jar of honey with honeycomb, chunks of fruit and ants suspended in the mixture.
Baloo’s Honey Preserves - Recipe #pixel_dailies #Pixquare #pixelart #Recipe #JungleBook #Baloo #Disney #fanart #Honey #foodart
Purchase
Meret Oppenheim, Object, Paris, 1936
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1136254
A Fateful Flourish, photo by me of a Sandhill Crane triumphantly throwing its wings and head back
My despair-fighting deed of the day: donated an exhibition piece to an awesome Ypsi therapist office / health community hub, because everyone deserves some wild wonder when they're going through it!
A Fateful Flourish 🪶
rhenyard.darkroom.com/products/164...
can anyone round here who prays please pray that my cat comes home soon
craters #pixelart
DAMN, this is gorgeous work!
Aloy and Sekuli sitting on platforms over the landscape of the cut
*makes an edit that one one will notice* ah, perfect, it’s fixed now
#hzd
Baldo, oil on linen 50x65 cm #dogs #dogportrait
A painting I did over the weekend. If you like my art please repost them! ❤️
#bearart #gayart #chubart #fatart #pride
An isometric expression of Mondrian artworks.
Inside the Mondridome #pixel_dailies #Pixquare #pixelart #dome #Mondrian #fanart
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Paul Burlin, Fallen Angel, 1943
https://botfrens.com/collections/14377/contents/1134818
Minister of Basic Education Siviwe Gwarube announced a record national pass rate of 88% for the 2025 National Senior Certificate (NSC) exams. This figure represents a steady 0.7% increase from 2024
it's ONLY the jewish country that gets a special word. if, when criticizing the zimbabwean government's human rights record, you said you were 'antizimbabwe' - gross! clearly gross! clearly bigoted and wrong! but folks call themselves 'antizionists' like it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do.
Illustration of a male lion solemnly looking at his lioness partner in the foreground. The male lion's head and mane take up the entire sky, with the left side covered in night, and the right side covered in sunshine and light.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone...
A lot of people epically failed to accept the basic reality that the 2024 election was an election with huge moral stakes and a clear right and wrong answer (for a wide range of reasons). They now are twisting themselves into knots to protect themselves from accepting that moral failing.
'Dismantling a country' is such a sinister euphemism, fucking hell.
Ink and watercolor illustration of a rabbit in a bonnet and dress, sitting in an armchair kitting. She sits in front of a blazing cottage hearth (there's a fire screen between her and the fire), and there are books on a shelf and herbs hanging to dry nearby.
"Cozy Corner," ink, watercolor, and acryla gouache 🍂
Art by Elisabeth Alba
Art prints at albaillustration.etsy.com
Illustration of a maple tree with 5 opossums sitting or hanging from its branches, reading books. There are three lanterns hanging from the branches.
Opossum Book Club! 📚
Art by Elisabeth Alba
On various merch over at www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/1698...
Illustration of a group of animal friends ice skating in a line - a chipmunk in front, next an otter and fox holding hands and wearing scarves, and a badger in the rear, also wearing a scarf. Snowy forest in background.
Ice skating! 🐿️🦦🦊🦡❄️⛸️
Art by Elisabeth Alba
The original painting is 2x3 inches in size, ink, watercolor, and acryla gouache
“Danseuses” feels less like a portrait of two specific people than an image of stage work with glamour built from repetition, endurance, and control. French artist Lucien Maillol depicts a pair of dancers simplified into strong volumes, their weight described through stance and counter-stance more than facial drama. It is both celebration and constraint as the dancers are vividly visible, yet emotionally self-contained and absorbed in their own rhythm, not ours. Two adult women occupy the foreground in a warm, brown-gold music hall or cabaret. Both have light skin and short dark hair tucked beneath wide, brick-red hats trimmed with small flowers. Their faces are softly modeled with stage makeup like rouged lips, shaded eyelids while their eyes angle downward, suggesting concentration rather than performance “to” us. Each wears long black gloves above the elbow and a deep, shimmering black dress with a plunging neckline. The skirts bloom into thick black tulle that becomes a dark cloud around their legs. Their bodies mirror one another in a synchronized step of knees bent, torsos angled, and arms extended as if holding balance and timing. Red high heels echo the hats, punctuating the movement with bright, sharp accents. The pairing matters as two bodies moving as one to depict chorus-line discipline and a way nightlife often turned women into coordinated spectacle. Yet their downcast focus complicates that because they appear absorbed in their own rhythm, poised between visibility and inwardness. That tension of being seen while staying self-possessed becomes the painting’s quiet charge. Maillol, born in Banyuls-sur-Mer in 1896, was in his early thirties when he made this work in 1928. That same year he exhibited paintings in Paris at Galerie Eugène Druet in a show explicitly listing “danseuses,” suggesting the subject belonged to his active artistic concerns rather than a single passing scene.
“Danseuses (Dancers)” by Lucien Maillol (French) - Oil on canvas / 1928 - Musée d’Art moderne de Paris (Paris, France) #WomenInArt #artText #arte #art #LucienMaillol #Maillol #MuseeDArtModerneDeParis #ModernArt #DanceArt #BlueskyArt #FrenchArtist #FrenchArt #dancer #1920s #Muséed’ArtModerneDeParis
重なる季節
Thando Lelo Nkhoma says her experience of giving birth in a Johannesburg hospital nearly four years ago left her traumatised because of the way she was treated by staff.
Read groundup.org.za/article/acti... by Kimberly Mutandiro
Refrigerator
(2022)
Guardian 🌿
This oil painting blends portrait realism with the visual language of antiquity via jewelry, music, smoke, and Egyptian pyramids to frame a near-mythic woman as both person and symbol. The pyramids act like a condensed sign of lineage like history made monumental while incense suggests ritual, remembrance, and continuity. Dropped slippers and a kneeling pose add tenderness and humanity to the “royal” staging, shifting the emphasis from dominance to presence and poise. A young woman is shown kneeling on a patterned ground covering, her body turned three-quarters while her face angles outward with a steady, peaceful calm. Her black hair is tucked beneath a richly patterned gold-colored headdress topped by a long feather that arcs upward. Gold hoop earrings, stacked bracelets, and a layered necklace catch warm light, echoing gilded accents woven through her sash and belt. Cream-colored fabric from her tunic pools in soft folds around her knees, painted with close attention to weight and sheen. One hand gracefully plucks faint strings of a tall, vertical harp, while the other steadies its ornate base including a stylized head. In front, sits a pair of golden pointed-toe slippers and to the right a brazier or incense burner sends up a ribbon of smoke. Behind her, multiple pyramids rise in the distance under a storm-dark sky, with a thin band of fiery light at the horizon. Painted in Iraq in 2002, the work’s crisp realism feels like intentional steadiness against an unsettled atmosphere for a carefully held image of endurance, where the distant glow at the horizon feels less like spectacle than a quiet, guarded hope. Iraqi artist Mozahim Al-Nasiri (مزاحم الناصري) was born in Mosul and trained at Baghdad’s Academy of Fine Arts. When this canvas was made, he was an independent painter, building a practice known for highly finished, psychologically attentive portraiture. He left Iraq in 2003, among those whose careers were reshaped by the country’s upheaval and dispersal.
“Pharaonic Girl (أميرة فرعونية)” by Mozahim Al-Nasiri (مزاحم الناصري) (Iraqi) - Oil on canvas / 2002 - Ibrahimi Collection (Amman, Jordan) #WomenInArt #IbrahimiCollection #MozahimAlNasiri #مزاحمالناصري #AlNasiri #AncientEgypt #IraqiArt #artText #artwork #BlueskyArt #IraqiArtist #PortraitofaWoman
Two women occupy a tall, narrow composition with a striking contrast of poses and garments. At left, a seated woman with deep brown skin, strong red lips, and large almond eyes faces forward with a steady gaze. She is wrapped in layered blue-green drapery and head covering. One hand extends across her lap, fingers holding her knee. At right, a second woman stands in profile, head bowed, wearing a luminous white veil and robe that nearly merges with the pale wall behind her. Her hand rises to her chin in a thoughtful gesture. A broad, simplified green plant enters from the upper left. Hungarian-Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil uses muted creams, gray-greens, blue, and warm ochre, with soft brushwork and flattened space, to create stillness and emotional gravity. These women are not presented as decorative types. They are rendered as distinct presences with one meeting the viewer’s gaze, one turning inward. The composition stages a quiet emotional dialogue through contrasts like seated/standing, frontal/profile, blue/white, and engagement/reflection. The broad empty wall becomes active space, heightening silence and psychological weight. Sher-Gil’s handling of form reflects her synthesis of European modernist structure and an Indian-centered figural vision. The result is intimate yet unsentimental, with dignity carried through posture, stillness, and the careful modeling of hands and faces. Painted in the mid-1930s, this work belongs to the crucial period after Sher-Gil’s return from Paris, when she shifted toward subjects in India and developed the earthier palette and monumental figuration that define her mature style. Born in Budapest to a Hungarian mother and Sikh father, she was in her twenties yet already a formidable painter, using portrait and genre imagery to challenge idealized or colonial ways of seeing. In works like this, women are neither background figures nor symbols alone. They are complex subjects shaped by mood, social reality, and self-possession.
“Two Women” by अमृता शेर-गिल Amrita Sher-Gil (Hungarian-Indian) - Oil on canvas on board / c. 1935-1936 - National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi, India) #WomenInArt #WomensArt #WomanArtist #WomenArtists #AmritaSherGil #Sher-Gil #अमृताशेरगिल #SherGil #AmritaSher-Gil #NGMA #artText #IndianArtist #IndianArt
An elderly mother and a young daughter sit close together at a table, their bodies angled toward a large open bible that spans the foreground. The older woman with light skin and deeply lined face wears a red headscarf tied under her chin, small round wire-frame glasses, and a dark gray sleeveless bodice over a white blouse with gathered sleeves. Her hands rest near the book’s edge, steady and practiced, as if holding the place. The younger woman with light skin and a warm flush in the cheeks leans in from the right, her forearm on the tabletop and her gaze lowered in concentration. She wears a textured maroon vest over a cream blouse with puffed sleeves. Her brown hair is parted and smoothed back. The younger woman’s arm drapes across the older woman’s shoulders in a gentle, protective arc, creating a quiet bridge between them. The background is muted soft gray and shadowed brown so the warm reds, skin tones, and the book’s pale pages become the emotional center. Their expressions are serious and inward, suggesting attentive listening, shared study, and a calm, intimate hush. German artist Hans Thoma frames reading as both devotion and kinship. The Bible is not simply an object, but a shared space where memory, instruction, and tenderness meet. His mother’s glasses and weathered hands evoke lived experience including years of labor, routine, and belief. Meanwhile, his sister’s softened posture and lowered eyes suggest learning that is chosen, not forced. That single arm around her mother’s shoulders matters as it can read as comfort, solidarity, or a reversal of care, where the daughter offers steadiness while receiving tradition. The pared-back setting intensifies the scene’s moral quiet. There is no spectacle, just the gravity of ordinary faith and family closeness. Painted in 1866, Thoma leans into Realism’s respect for everyday life, treating domestic ritual as worthy of monumentality.
“Mutter und Schwester des Künstlers, in der Bibel lesend” (The Artist’s Mother & Sister Reading the Bible) by Hans Thoma (German) - Oil on cardboard / 1866 - Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe (Germany) #WomenInArt #HansThoma #Thoma #artText #art #StaatlicheKunsthalleKarlsruhe #KunsthalleKarlsruhe
