Sorry, family...I blew my Christmas budget on art. For myself.
But you can come over and look at it any time you want...
I bought a painting today, a watercolor. I've known the artist for several years, from when I starting buying his prints at shows. He is the kind of painter I wanted to be. His washes are delicate, his detail precise...even if I had his talent I'd never have the patience to do work like that.
I have three of his originals now. The prints are lovely, but even with watercolor there is texture and depth that you lose in a print.
The painting I bought today is a landscape, mountain in the background, stone wall in the foreground, blooming cherry trees in the middle. The blooms are bright white, the paint scraped away with a razor. The meadow is a wash of a hundred shades of green, like you see in spring. And I love the stone fence...it reminds me of the Frost poem: Something there is that doesn't love a wall.
Talking about a painting without showing it is pretty useless, isn't it? I'm afraid a digital image won't begin to do it justice, even if I scanned it at the highest resolution technically possible.
I feel a little guilty every time I buy a painting. Yes, it is an original, but probably not of the type that can be considered an investment. It's not like I'm ignoring the mortgage, but I wonder if this art money oughta be in a mutual fund or something, if I'm going to need it for medicine when I'm old.
But I fell hard for the cherry trees. And I'll be old and have to worry about it soon enough, for now at least I have my trees. To quote Housman:
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
Money spent on art is never wasted.
Posted by: Ted at November 22, 2003 11:18 PM