The Art of becoming Art Sept 19-24

I really love that Washington DC is three hours from SVU. 

I got to spend all of Friday at the National Gallery of Art. Can you think of a better way to spend your day?

There are three things I love about museums.

1. The Actual Museum

Rooms and hallways lined with Art. I love standing in one room and looking through at different angles and seeing even more art.

 In some instances that can be overwhelming, but the National Gallery does it in a very tasteful way. I cant describe to you how much joy a scene like the one below fills my soul.

I have been to the National Gallery before, but no one told me that there was a whole other building connected to the gallery! It is connected by a fancy light tunnel and leads to the modern section of the museum.

2. The Actual Art

This may seem obvious, but Art is breath taking. I have a wonderful Drawing professor. The way he talks about art is absolutely beautiful. When talking about museums he likes to remind us all that going to a museum is a mental game. It takes so much strength and mental stamina to endure a museum. And that is because museums are like people. They are all different and offer different things. And that is a cool thing in and of itself!

I love Van Gogh. For drawing we had to sketch 3 paintings of our choosing. WOW! What an experience. It connects you to paintings in an entirely different way. 
We choose to draw Roses by Vincent Van Gogh. 

It was painted the year that he died which changed the way I looked at it. When drawing the roses and looking at them in detail, half of them are living and full of life, and the other half are not dead but starting to die. The colors are green, blue, and white. Simple but also powerful. Its an interesting thing to capture. What, and more importantly, how was Van Gogh feeling as he painted this work? 

3. The People That Go To Museums

I find the psychology behind art museums probably the most fascinating. Why do people come to museums? Why do certain people like certain art? What makes a painting famous? Why can people make it a goal to see and observe paintings and completely miss others? What makes me skip a room or glance at a painting? What catches my attention?

My friend Rachel and I sat down to draw one of my favorite paintings. Its a painting of a women (probably Mary Cassatt one of my other favorite artist) walking through a museum. I loved the idea that we were walking through a museum now sitting down to sketch a painting of a women walking through a museum. 

But it gets better.

As we started to sketch, a man comes and sits down next to us. He held out his ipad with a picture of us looking at this painting. He told us that he has been waiting all day for that moment and asked if he could PAINT THAT PICTURE! So now we were in a museum, looking at a painting of a women walking through a museum painted by a painter, now going to be painted looking at a picture in an art museum. It was art inception. We became art. How cool!? 

There are also people like this women. It was so cool to see her painting this Monet painting. She was incredible.

It was a great day! So relaxing.


We went to Lunch in the Museum, and I had a wonderful sandwich. It was ham, brie, and apricot. So good!
 

My advice? Go to a museum but don't just rush through a gallery. Don't worry about seeing every painting. In fact, that will just ruin your experience. Think about how a painting makes you feel. Think about why you are intrigued by that painting. Is it the color, the subject, the painter? Art is a commentary on the world. It's meant to make us observe and think. So don't forget that. Love that. Learn from that. 

"Stop thinking of art works as objects, and start thinking of them as triggers for experiences." -Roy Ascott