The art of understanding....art.

This week seemed about a month long. It started out badly. I just felt low and hopeless. On Wednesday I met with my doctor and we came up with a plan to get back to work. Since that meeting I've felt much better - much less like I'm hanging out in the Twilight Zone not knowing what the hell I'm doing. So I am ending the week with more hope and a feeling like I can conquer my fears and have a good and productive life. Maybe it's even time to dream a little - something I've never done. I'm thinking of planning a trip to Yosemite. It will give me something to work towards and to look forward to.

Today as part of my "getting out and pushing back the walls of agoraphobia plan" (otherwise known as GOPBWAP), I went to a local art museum. It's a pretty small place but good for a beginner like myself. The next step would be the Museum of Fine Art in Boston which maybe I'll do in the Spring.

I will admit right off that I know nothing about art. Zero. Tree pretty. Sky Blue.

They were having a special Andy Warhol exhibit. I don't GET Andy Warhol AT ALL. His - I don't know what to call them - paintings (??) ...... art (??) look to me like photographs that have been colored in - silk screened, I guess. These were not his soup can pictures but those of famous people; Mao Zedong, Ronald Reagan, and Jackie Kennedy to name a few. There were about 10 identical pictures of Mao...one with a yellow shirt, one with a blue shirt and so on. What do these pictures say? That Mao looks pretty in a full range of colors? I know I'm showing my ignorance here, but can anyone explain Andy Warhol to me? The only thing I find amazing about him is his hair - how did he do that before flat irons were invented?

Another thing about art that well, frightens me actually are the old paintings with children in them. The children always look like they have a little old man's head on their body...and not a nice little old man but a creepy old man like the preacher in Poltergeist 3. Did they not have the technique yet to paint a child's face?

Women were also painted strangely...actually a lot of them have man faces too. There was a painting of Helen of Troy who should be a vision of extreme loveliness. This woman had bug eyes, a caved in mouth and a man's face. Not to be cruel, but a war in her honor would have only been fought by those creepy guys in Deliverance. Definitely not whole countries. Yikes! My question is, did all the women really look like that back then, or did the painters only know how to paint male faces? Has the opinion of what's "beautiful" changed so much over the years?

My favorite painter is Maxfield Parrish. He had one painting at the museum and it was the most

beautiful one there, in my opinion. Definitely check him out. He does amazing things with light. This painting absolutely glowed as if there was some inner electricity at work. And it also managed to do something I think very difficult - make Winter look warm and inviting. Maybe if I see through the eyes of Maxfield Parrish, Winter won't be so hard to get through after all.