Do remember the moment when you first fell in love with art?
I do.
I would have been around eight years old and my parents took me to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
My Mom had to finally pull me away from the paintings of Claude Monet as I was truly mesmerized, having never seen something that spoke so clearly to my young romantic self. The one who would hide in her oak panelled closet to read for hours, believe in ghosts and create imaginary worlds.
I was still unformed and uninformed.
What I liked was because…well, just that. Chords were struck, simple internal music.
Slowly, I taught myself about painting and sculpture but with it came the pressure of snobbery. “Oh, I can’t possibly enjoy *fill in the blank*.” I would waiver, then abandon. Monet, Erté and Maxfield Parrish to name a few, all deemed entirely too commercial by the New York Citified version of me.
And yet the other evening, it was Mr. Parrish that came to mind as I strolled outside of Les Baux with Remi and Ben. His colors entirely lit the hills on fire without the slightest hint of menace. Or getting burnt. And so his sweet stories of possibility wrapped around me. I let them.
How grateful I am to have doubled back in some way, almost to where I started. To see, to appreciate, to wonder without caring why.
Do you remember your first brush with art? What did it give you?
Wishing you all a very fine weekend…
Wonderful post to read with equally wonderful responses
If I had to say when, the it would be…from white metal bars on my crib, past the umber brown and sienna gold wood of the attic beams, moving down the stairs to warmth, upholstery, carpets, indoor plumbing, and doorways to the outdoors where grass, gravel, dandelions and a smoke bush lure me into the art of this existence episode. Since then Art and I have been trampling out a bit of space in this world like a deer in a field of tall grasses.
Masterpiece Theatre. . .that's what your blog is! I am taking a different approach to a comment (although your words and photos were again fabulous) but today I wanted to thank you for sharing such a fabulous group of blogosphere friends with me. On other blogs, I simply scroll to the bottom, add my comment and I am off to other stops. Here, it is like being at a cocktail party where I stop and chat with others — I read each comment — and am actually beginning to feel like I know others. Maybe I will one day as Veronica (French Girl in Seattle) are planning a rendezvous as we've discovered we don't live far from each other but we 'met' there in Provence … our mutual friend Heather brought us together. So thanks to all of your readers – I've been enriched by both your comments and theirs.
You always make me relive a memory Heather and yes, I remember my first brush with art. It was literally a brush in the third grade when I first started painting and found I am a little talent and that led to my fascination with art. I don’t worry about what others think I should like or not since art is a very personal experience.
Your picture taking has come a long way since you first started posting and I’m guessing that’s Remi’s influence. Your images and words are like a concert that I look forward to hearing again and again.
I hope you, Remi and Ben have a wonderful and bright New Year’s!
XXX
Debra~
Dear Heather,
Oddly enough (given thatI make my living these days by painting and drawing), I never paid the slightest attention whatsoever to graphic art until I was almost thirty. I should emphasize that my only (and LAST, to be sure) "education" in art was in the fifth grade. That experience culminated in my receiving the lowest grade possible, and the agitated teacher's summoning my parents for a prolonged meeting during which my parents and the teacher and the principal all told each other what they thought of each other. It was all fairly thrilling for me at that age (I was in the room), but it also confirmed my opinion that art was for boring, not-very-bright folks. I'm not exaggerating a bit.
My great sin was that I had "no class spirit" (still don't, so I guess she was right on that score) and didn't sufficiently help to clean-up the room before the next class came in each day. I was also bored shitless, at age 8, by all the "crafts" projects; the fact remained that, like almost everyone in my family (none of whom do anything remotely "artistic" for an actual living), I could draw perfectly well……better, I recall considering, than that inane (not to mention enterprisingly insecure), plodding teacher.
I did spend 15 years furiously (read "obsessively") studying piano (I suppose that counts as "an interest in art"), and I went through a brief, late 70's phase of weaving and macrame-ing any number of "wall hangings", appalling belts and vest which my relatives would pretend to enjoy (but never wore), and pot-hangers while I listened, over and over again, to Carole King's "Tapestry". That said?…My brief, "fiber-arts" period merely placed me among the 130 million or so other americans doing the same thing at that time.
In high-skool, I happily discovered Andrew Wyeth, so I bought a set of drawing pencils and made large copies of two of his drawings that I liked. Doing so was cheaper than buying the posters. These drawings were pronounced perfectly suitable by my parents and were the last things I made/did (other than carrying them through a series of dorm-rooms in college and my first gradskoolz) until I was 29 or so.
I was writing a dissertation on Thomas Hardy when a friend of mine, who'd recently opened an Indian restaurant, showed me the 3000 dollar advertising bill that'd been proposed to her. I told her that was stupid….ANYONE could draw. so, I drew the ads (which came out in the weekly independent newspapers and quickly became a sort of cult-item, with folks wondering "Is this a REAL restaurant?…or just a series of politically-incorrect cartoons?"). The state's largest newspaper picked me up to illustrate the weekly book-review section (remember when those still existed?), and the Washington Post Book Review followed suit. I occupied, after four degrees in literature, the enviable niche of being able not only to draw the authors, but also knowing how to pronounce their names, etcetera.
All in all, I can't say that I ever had one of those "Ah-hah!" artistic-moments, unless you count the time (this was during my final, grim&dreary dissertation year) I got a big (by my standards, back then) advance-check in the mail for a bookcover, and I realized "Oh, drawing the outsides of books is a lot more fun and makes more money than writing/discussing the insides of them…".
I've been happily and productively doing the same for something going on twenty years now.
And that is the decidedly unsentimental story of my "Discovery of Art".
Level Best as Ever,
david terry
http://www.davidterryart.com
Jeanne, this brought tears to my eyes. I wish that I could magically come to your house to sit and have coffee with you, talk about other things to distract you a bit. Make you laugh. But I know how strong you are. And I can only begin to imagine what it must mean for your parents that you are there for them now. Having already lost my Dad, I can tell you that this time is so precious and that no one can ever change that you are giving back to them some of what they so willingly gave to you. I was not there for my Dad's passing and it will always haunt me, Jeanne so I know with all of my heart that you are doing the right thing. But I understand that doesn't make it easy so I am happy that this post brought back some happy memories. Ah, those beautiful portraits! Sargent has long been a favorite but I didn't discover the fascination of Reynolds and Gainsborough until seeing them up close at the Frick in NYC. Have you been there? It is one of my favorite places in the world.
Sending you lots of love and strength. If there is anything else I can do, please let me know. I know that all of your friends in blogland are sending the same.
xoxo to you too,
h
Now I want to go back and rediscover his work all over again… 🙂
If I had any idea that this post would evoke such responses, I would have asked the question long ago, of that you can be sure!
You are such an intensely verbal person (in my limited way of knowing of you) D that I love hearing that you grew up in such a visually fueled environment. But then again, the act of looking seems a large part of what you do so perhaps it isn't that surprising.
And yes, I feel the same about both the art that surrounds me in my daily life and those that I visit each time I get back to NYC…they are old friends and treasured ones. I have been known to talk quietly to them.
Thank you for giving me your support this past year, it has meant so much. I can't wait to discover Fred Deux and CoBra.
Wishing you also a year ahead full of joy and peace.
Oh you're welcome! I always appreciate how you express yourself and it is nice to have one of your lovely comments here too. 🙂
What a blessing to have grown up with such creativity–I imagine that yours was encouraged as well. And how interesting your idea of wanting to be able to step into an environment. It makes me think of the paintings Van Gogh did while he was in Arles…well, you would have been tossed and turned by the Mistral wind!
Tabitha, seeing the Lucien Freud show at the Metropolitan in 1993 absolutely blew my mind. I went back so many times. One of those amazing painters that you have to see to understand. I love that you chose such complicated artists–you never, ever cease to surprise me!
And my experience in Russia really was quite something. A very densely packed experience. I remember one in our group found a Korean restaurant and we all were so desperate to finally eat vegetables again! For lunch, I would go every day to a busy underground workman's restaurant and get two blinis: one with butter trout roe, the other with apricot jam. I could go on and on…
Maxfield Parrish. Wow. He was the first artist I took an interest in when I was a wee lass. I still have a book of his art on my shelf that my first boyfriend gave me on my birthday in 1976. Fast forward to 2001, Hubby and I (ahem, not the first boyfriend) were in New York and we stayed at the St Regis Hotel. I almost had a stroke when we walked into the hotel bar for cocktails. The room is dominated by a stunning mural of Old King Cole by Maxfield Parrish. Having cocktails surrounded by that painting is etched in my memory and heart. After reading your post with your beautiful snaps, I pulled out that book and floated back to the happy, innocent, wide-eyed past. Thank you for that.