First Thursday at 49 Geary Street in San Francisco

I spent a delightful hour or so at First Thursday, revisiting The Scott Nichols photography gallery which has stunning works, including the current celebration of George Tice, "A Photographer's Photographer" from September 5-November 16, 2013.  Reception will take place September 26: 5:30-7:30 pm and the lst Annual Fotovision lecture at UC Berkeley School of Journalism, Friday, September 27, 6:30-8:30 pm.   www.scottnicholsgallery.com

"The Kora Dialogues" a series of paintings created by Ricardo Mazal, whom the Maeght Foundation in France has collected, can be found at the Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery   Mt Kalish became source material for the third part of his trilogy at the suggestion of a friend who had made the famous pilgrimage and he made his own personal trek, or Kora, a circumambution around Kalish in June, July 2009.   He started his journey with his wife, at a Buddhist monastery at the base, famous for "sky burials".   Serene and yet filled with force, but ordered with precision and a chant like rhythm.  The writer of the exhibition catalogue content thinks of Mozart's requiem, with its "slow, steady, but relentless horizontal rhythm; its great sense of loss and its great sense of acceptance..." He continues:  "Mazal captures a kind of geological time ... full of movement and change...  A deep drama plays out in these compositions that, like the mountain itself, doesn't yield its secrets"  They are in my view the most powerful spiritual paintings I have seen and when I learned their source, think immediately of Colin Thubron's journey to this mountain; he however climbed it, as well as made the circumambulation and the narrative text is to redeem the loss of his sister, in an avalanche at a young age, and was written at the time of the death of his mother, his parents, now both departed from the earth, and Colin left to reconcile those losses. His book is:  To a Mountain in Tibet  2011 Harper Collins.  "    This is an account of a journey to the holiest mountain on earth, the solitary peak of Kailas in Tibet, sacred to one fifth of mankind."  In climbing it, Colin "explores his own need for solitude, which has shaped his career as a writer -- one who travels to places beyond his own history and culture, writing...about them...an intimate personal voyage, "to mark the passage of his family".  Haunting, and beautiful, and poignant...I hope the painter has read this account. 
 

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