Number 59: Flowers for Aquinas,"The Dumb Ox." (November 12, 2020).


 

The painting is "for Aquinas" because of its displaying a certain (for me) vivid crudity of which I am currently and joyfully in pursuit.  The "Dumb Ox" Aquinas reference comes from G.K. Chesterton's brilliant study, Saint Thomas Aquinas:The "Dumb Ox" (Image Books, 1959).  "Saint Thomas was so stolid," writes Chesterton,  "that the scholars, in the schools which he attended regularly, thought he was a dunce" (p.21).  

Chesterton also observes that "The saint is a medicine because he is an antidote" (p. 23).