Katherine Keenum

Blog post tip: A post on Samuel Palmer's trees at Charley Parker's Lines and Colors is a good follow-up to thoughts about touch in graphic art and fiction. A few days ago, I heard about a child who climbed into the crotch of a tree  Read More 

Samuel Palmer’s art has sparked in me a new appreciation of what etchings can do. This tender scene of a shepherd returning home in moonlight was inspired by lines from John Bampfylde’s sonnet, “On Christmas” (1778):

Old Christmas comes, to close the waned year,
And aye the shepherd's heart to make right glad;
Who, when his teeming flocks are homeward had,
To blazing hearth repairs, and nut-brown beer;
And views, well pleased, the ruddy prattlers dear
Hug the grey mongrel …

Hearth, gentle light, loved ones, and the wonder of new interests be yours this Christmas Eve. Read More 

For an autumnal Thanksgiving bonus before holly, mistletoe, and fir trees take over, here is a bonus Samuel Palmer (via Wikipedia Commons).

Grain is harvested at the end of summer, not in November, but the American Thanksgiving originates in gratitude for the harvest. Rather than rush into the frenzy of a commercialized Christmas season, I am lingering with rural imagery by Samuel Palmer, whom I have  Read More