Knowing how to be calm is one of life’s greatest skills, for even if we have every other possible advantage, so long as our mind is frantic, we will never taste the happiness we seek.
This ingenious small book is nothing less than a comprehensive guide to the art of calm. It takes us systematically through the many things that unsettle us and arrives at a range of solutions to ease our spirits and usher in a less fretful and anguished perspective.
Throughout the book, entries are accompanied by images that invite contemplation and generate small moments of joy. We are invited not just to understand calm but to appreciate it with our eyes and discover it with our senses. The book amounts to a small museum of calm and a psychological guidebook that can help to quieten our worries and bring on a new mood of serenity and ease.
Featuring the work of photographers and artists including Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gustav Klimt, Gwen John, Johannes Vermeer and Edward Hopper, alongside essays to invite contemplation.
Gustav Klimt’s Pear Tree (1903) reminds us that we do not need a life of fame or melodramatic relationships, and we should instead make our peace with so-called ordinariness. Mark Salamon’s photograph, The Rays (2020), accompanies a guided anxiety-reducing exercise that we can partake in when the noise of the day has subsided.
Hardback book | 140 x 203 mm | 96 pages with 40 colour images
