The Garden of Earthly Delights

The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (c. mid 15th century)

This morning as I bounced up and down on the ReBoundAir I immersed myself in a broadcast with Terry Tempest Williams which was recorded with Michael Toms on New Dimensions Radio. It's a wonderful interview made a little over eight years ago regarding her then new book, Leap, which was inspired by this amazing painting above. The $1.99 I paid for this download a while back has given me more inspiration than I can say. With the amazing iPod (or on your computer) one can revisit it often, and I do, and there is always a new morsel of wonder to be had.

Here is the information on this broadcast, THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF ART, made in June of 2000. You can learn more about Terry, listen to it or download it here. You can also listen to a free snippet by creating an account with their site; a very rich resource brought to us by the amazing World Wide Web, upon which you are now perched. (!)

There are 45 different birds in Bosch's painting and Terry recounts how she had been bird watching behind the Prado during one visit, and took her binocs into the museum to sit and watch the birds in his painting. :)  Leap is well worth a read and there is a fold-out of the painting at the back for reference. 

The first time Terry Tempest Williams looked upon Hieronymus Bosch's painting, "The Garden of Earthly Delights," it captivated her spirit—and didn't let her go until she had walked a seven year pilgrimage through the multiple dimensions of the painting—a painting that remains as mysterious and provacative as it was five hundred years ago. The masterpiece spoke to Williams and she returns the favor eloquently—weaving together the spiritual, psychological, religious, ecological, and emotional intensity of a work of art that transformed her life. "Bosch's genius was saying, there is a real world, a beautiful world, an ambiguous world, a world of discovery and curiosity that is the center panel, the middle path."

In-joy~