Sean Steele @rseansteele - Twitter Profile

This is one of my favourite Norman Rockwell paintings, and technically one of his finest. But its real meaning lives in that small room at the back... The painting is Shuffleton's Barbershop, made in 1950. At first you see a small-town barbershop at night, closed and empty, seen from the street through the front window. Rockwell painted every detail with obsessive care: the cracked blind, the worn magazines, the swept floor. But look past all of it, through the doorway at the very back. There, in a small lit room behind the shop, three men have gathered after hours. The barber and his friends are playing music together, a cello, a violin, a clarinet, glowing in the warm light while the dark, silent shop waits in front of them. You can almost hear their song... And this is why I love this picture: the part of the barber's life that matters most is the little room in the back, after the door is locked, where he becomes something else entirely, a musician among friends, doing the thing he actually loves. Rockwell put the public life in the foreground, large and dim, and the real life far in the distance, small and lit and easy to miss. It says something true about nearly all of us. The part of a person the world sees, the job and the daily routine, is so rarely the part that holds their heart. The life that matters is often the hidden one, after hours, off to the side, in a back room the passing world never sees. Everyone has one. You just rarely get to look into anyone else's...

JamesLucasIT's tweet photo. This is one of my favourite Norman Rockwell paintings, and technically one of his finest. But its real meaning lives in that small room at the back...

The painting is Shuffleton's Barbershop, made in 1950. At first you see a small-town barbershop at night, closed and empty, seen from the street through the front window. Rockwell painted every detail with obsessive care: the cracked blind, the worn magazines, the swept floor.

But look past all of it, through the doorway at the very back. There, in a small lit room behind the shop, three men have gathered after hours. The barber and his friends are playing music together, a cello, a violin, a clarinet, glowing in the warm light while the dark, silent shop waits in front of them.

You can almost hear their song...

And this is why I love this picture: the part of the barber's life that matters most is the little room in the back, after the door is locked, where he becomes something else entirely, a musician among friends, doing the thing he actually loves. Rockwell put the public life in the foreground, large and dim, and the real life far in the distance, small and lit and easy to miss.

It says something true about nearly all of us. The part of a person the world sees, the job and the daily routine, is so rarely the part that holds their heart. The life that matters is often the hidden one, after hours, off to the side, in a back room the passing world never sees. Everyone has one. You just rarely get to look into anyone else's...

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Sean Steele @RSeanSteele

about 18 hours ago

@MichelleLA1981 Yay! 😃. Finally, anti-semitism will be taken to the next level. 🇨🇦is cooked

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Sean Steele @RSeanSteele

about 18 hours ago

@echipiuk It started decades ago. I worked public sector for 30+ yrs. To show they were as tough and badass as private sector, an “ask forgiveness not permission” was encouraged and rewarded. The trick was then was to be badass within prevailing ideology. …and here we are

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