Monday, a down day. The waves crashing against the rocks in the painting don’t move me because a.) I doubt they were real rocks the painter really saw, and b.) doubted he/she had the knack to really paint. It’s like it was either missing something or had too of something much put in it. It was also a bad angle with the rocks I wouldn’t stop to admire. The foreground had the texture of an unwashed potato or a sea monster from a bad TV show and the sea stacks behind it, by how they leaned looked rubber. There was nothing special about the spray, it was like a cotton ball beard coming apart. Even the blue of the water wasn’t the sea at its best blue, and the sea needs to be at its best if it’s to be painted.

And that’s the thing about art, what I saw, what he/she saw who painted it. Did they really feel it or just need the money? Had they gone cold inside and started clipping them off like toe nails for anyone who didn’t know better? Because many people don’t, and that’s art too.

I didn’t even like the sky, it was a wash of purple and skies never look that way; they’re varied, if they’re worth painting.

And a sky is always worth painting if you know how to look at it right, if you take the time to look up and believe it’s still important to do even though it’s been done a million times before. It forces you to look at the world like it could be a piece of art and if you think that way, it is. There’s no sky I can think of that’s the same when it makes me stop to lose myself in it, and that’s why we need to keep painting them. Perhaps we just need to lose a part of ourselves to not feel so encumbered by all we are or want to be.

Categories: musings

Tags: aesthetics, art, existentialism, expats, Galway, landscape paintings, Memoir, spirituality, the nature of art, travel, writing, writing technique