I have been half in love with easeful death. . Keats

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its colour, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery, and the sacrifice or wealth and chastity, which used to be said to be the greatest of human disasters, a mere flea-bite in comparison. Virginia Woolf

Went to see Bright Star, the new movie about John Keats. Really struck by how little critical praise or financial profit he received during his short life - he did not even have enough money to get to Italy that last year in order to convalesce and avoid another cold English winter - his friends had to come up with the money. If he had known about the book, "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow," he certainly would have figured the money was following at a safe distance.

I remember hearing that orange is the least popular color in a painting while blue is at the top of the list. If Keats had been a painter, he would have just continued with puce if that had been his passion. But it is hard to not ever listen to a quiet voice saying, well, maybe just a nice blue painting to see if it sells quickly.

Here's Vuillard's Two Women at the Linen Closet. How does he get so much with so little out of those faces?

This is my only orange painting, Noon, inspired from a photo I took in Rome, not far from where Keats died in 1821 at the age of 25. Ready to sell to a color-blind individual.