SLP

When I view all of your images each week, I feel the love that you have bestowed into each one with your devotion and also with your skills and it warms me and this is one of the many reasons I create this showcase each and every week because I want your work to be seen and to be shown. I count my blessings everyday to be in this position, where I can show the world, your art.  

In between many things this week, I have been reading a book entitled “The Art of Loving” by Erich Fromm.  There’s a paragraph in this book, that I want to share with you all today, because it thoroughly sums up how important love is, over so much and to my mind, when we have love in our heart, we can help others and this is what I try to do every single day. Here’s the paragraph, “The first step to take is to become aware that love is an art, just as living is an art; if we want to learn how to love we must proceed in the same way we have to proceed if we want to learn any other art, say music, painting, carpentry, or the art of medicine or engineering. What are the necessary steps in learning any art? The process of learning an art can be divided conveniently into two parts: one, the mastery of the theory; the other, the mastery of the practice. If I want to learn the art of medicine, I must first know the facts about the human body, and about various diseases. When I have all this theoretical knowledge, I am by no means competent in the art of medicine. I shall become a master in this art only after a great deal of practice, until eventually the results of my theoretical knowledge and the results of my practice are blended into one — my intuition, the essence of the mastery of any art. But, aside from learning the theory and practice, there is a third factor necessary to becoming a master in any art — the mastery of the art must be a matter of ultimate concern; there must be nothing else in the world more important than the art. This holds true for music, for medicine, for carpentry — and for love. And, maybe, here lies the answer to the question of why people in our culture try so rarely to learn this art, in spite of their obvious failures: in spite of the deep-seated craving for love, almost everything else is considered to be more important than love: success, prestige, money, power — almost all our energy is used for the learning of how to achieve these aims, and almost none to learn the art of loving“.

If you would like your work to be considered for entry into our weekly Mobile Photography and Art flickr group, please submit it to our dedicated group, here. If you would like to view our previous Flickr Group Showcases (please go here).

Many congratulations to the following artists for being featured this week:

Kostas Pilot, Tuba, Waldemar Blazej Nowak, Alejandra Cendan Rodrig…, Kristie Benoit, Janet Reid, Tomaso Belloni, Lorenka Campos, Donna Donato, Julia Nathanson, Sheldon Serkin, Louise Whiting, Yasuo Furue, Mimi Svanberg, Elaine, Siegfried Ferlin, Vanessa Vox, Luc Borell, Juta Jazz, … czapkat …, Karen Axelrad, Tricia Dewey, BlemishedEye / David Booker, Sarah Kuhn, Jun Yamaguchi, Francesco Sambati, Vladmir Dimitroff, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Malou Dawit, SLP…, Patricia Januszkiewicz, Gianluca Ricoveri, Francesco x, David Hayes, Poetic Medium, Louise Whiting, Gillian Brodie, Dominique Torrent, Luther Roseman Dease, Jill Lian, Barbara Nebel, Jo Sullivan, Alex Paton, Sandra Becker, Armineh Hovanesian, Susan Rennie, David DeNagel, borisbschulz2009, Broadgreen, Paul Yan