We just returned from a visit to our daughters home who lives in Charleston, SC. I have to say it is very difficult to come back from 73 and sunshine to this cold weather, brrrrrr.

As we usher another New Year. I decided to focus my last post of the year on what I feel are noteworthy events in art. 
I took these from a Huffington Post Article: 
you can go here to check out the rest of the list. 
(..you don’t want to miss the Vagina Stadium)  


(1)   
In November, a 1969 painting by Francis Bacon set a world record for most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” was sold for $142,405,000 at Christie’s postwar and contemporary art sale. The triptych depicts Bacon’s friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud.


(2)
A massive hoard of more than 1,400 artworks found by tax investigators in a Munich apartment this November. The uncovered paintings included works by Pablo Picasso, Max Liebermann, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Marc Chagall, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Gustave Courbet, Auguste Renoir and Canaletto.

(3)
The world’s most mysterious and omnipresent street artist, Banksy, spent the entire month of October surprising New Yorkers and Instagram followers with an open-air exhibition titled “Better Out Than In.” Throughout the month Banksy delivered his signature stencils and familiar brand of art-inspired pranks, including selling his original pieces for $60 a pop in Central Park. For his final act, Banksy altered a second-hand painting from thrift store Housing Works, selling it back for a whopping $615,000… Until the buyer backed out.




 Perhaps one of saddest events of 2013, was the loss of a great man-Nelson Mandela. I will leave you with two of my favorite quotes. 

Folly Beach Park, Charleston SC

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
and the one that I still often remind my children: 
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
 and one that no one can take away from you. 



Peace, Good Tidings and Happy Painting for a new year,
Valerie