ART HISTORY

I was eight years old when I fell in love with a large framed painting at a flea-market. I begged and borrowed and the neighbor-boy and I carried the masterpiece between us, up the hills and into the apartment, my heart pounding in anticipation of impressing my family.

I don’t remember what kind of response I expected, but I was bewildered by their negativity and down-the-nose assertion that the painting was gaudy – most definitely not art!

My enthusiasm for the painting – a moose in a dark forest, majestic antlers and frosty breath, would not be diminished, however! If it was gaudy, I didn’t care! I think this was the day my aversion to snobbery was born.

Snobbery comes in many forms; material, spiritual, intellectual etc. I am unfit for competitiveness due to a lack of interest. I simply cannot relate. If we like something, does it have to be approved or validated by others? It may be a good mental exercise to serve lofty opinions and deep interpretations, but it seems like “bad taste” to judge the “bad taste” of others. Art for art’s sake is enough! Everyone is born an artist, but judgment stifles creativity and joy.

Today I bought art for the second time in my life. A large, naked wall in my kitchen begged to be adorned.  I am presently taking watercolor classes from Claudio Alberto Soriano, a well-known Peruvian artist. For weeks, I had coveted a surrealist painting in his studio, wanting it more and more with each visit. I finally expressed my interest, but his reply was vague. Then one day – the painting was gone. Sold!  

Alberto said he would paint a special painting – just for me. He did! Week by week, it emerged on the canvas. This morning, Alberto delivered and mounted it. A bleak wall was transformed to spectacular! Of course, the painting is “too good” to hang in a kitchen. It deserves a loftier place of honor, but I am past age 18 and do as I please. Forget those “shoulds!”

Alberto’s painting has life! I am at my desk in the living room, missing this painting – fish swimming in the streets, birds, leaves bigger than the city buildings — representing my life!

It’s been said, “You can have it all — but not all at once.” I was a nature girl. Now I am a city girl. But in the painting I am both and I always will be both. I have it all! Art makes things possible!

Apples don’t fall far from the tree, I suppose. This painting doesn’t need interpretation. It is obviously a merger of dreams and reality, city and wilderness. It feels like a portrait of me. It reflects my longings, my multiple and over-lapping lives.

Art! Definitely!