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 St. Patrick, meet your better half!  Brigid is a jolly saint of babies, poets, cows, scholars, travelers, and beer (the last attribution mine).  She's a vernal saint associated with the green fire of rising spring energy. I'm doing a Brigid-inspired series now, but what I love about her is this list of her best and deepest wishes for the world.  Read to the end and then get yourself a brewsky.
I would like the angels of Heaven to be among us.
I would like an abundance of peace.
I would like full vessels of charity.
I would like rich treasures of mercy.
I would like cheerfulness to preside over all.
I would like Jesus to be present.
I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us.
I would like the friends of Heaven to be gathered around us from all parts.
I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me.
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching Heaven’s family drinking it through all eternity.
 
 
Pollock, Rothko, de Kooning and others are the bad boys of abstraction.  Sometimes their cultural mileu of hard-drinking, smoking, angst-ridden New York painting seems centuries away.  Abstract Expressionism and the American Experience by Irving Sandler brings clarity into the sometimes confusing scene.

This is a beautiful volume. Each chapter is an essay on a different historical aspect of abstract expressionism, including field and gesture painting and the influence of mythic metaphors and WW2. I enjoyed the clarity of Sandler's observations over more than 50 years of direct cultural experience of the times-- he was born in 1925. Though younger than many of the painters, he was there.  His voice has a resonant authenticity that is far deeper than the art-speak of more recent criticism.

The book contains many gems. Motherwell describes the advantages of Pollock's horizontal, easel-free painting style, a revelation providing insight into the hidden deliberation of the drip paintings.  Gesture paintings were inspired by the improvisations of jazz.

Sandler writes: Like musicians, they radically reduced the distance between the composition and performance, extended the expressive range of their mediums, and aspired to find their own voices... Dave Brubeck mirrored the artists' thinking when he wrote, "I aim at the inspired moment; that is, the balance of human emotion, creativity, imagination, and a technical facility equal to the idea of the moment."

Inspired, and inspiring. Recommended.