Art Theraphy

Yesterday when I went into Dallas to deliver my mixed media piece to the show I took my camera and a plan to check out a few shows for my class. I decided on stopping by the MAC, the McKinney Avenue Contemporary. I did a little exploring which loosely translates as letting myself get lost. But in doing so I made myself better acquainted with the area. I found some dogwood trees that were still blooming, some azalea and tulips all by Turtle Creek. Great find. So I was very happy with my little photo session.

I went to the MAC and was pleasantly surprised by the show. The artist in the main two galleries was a man named Olin Travis, the show called People, Places and Visions. The first room houses what I thought was the more serious art. It is dramatic in theme and execution. All the work has dramatic sources of light, lots of colors that fade into blacks. They are full on human emotion and pathos. As I took my time studying each one I was taken in by them, they struck a chord with me that was unexpected. I also related into them through my own art. I could see a connection that I have with. I bought the catalog so I will be able to reference that paintings when I work. I want to try some things I saw in them. The first room had both figures and an environment; I won’t say landscape because the landscape was invented. The other room held his more traditional landscapes and portraits that I loved because of the subject matter and the more impressionist rendering of the work. You could see the influence of the Impressionist and post impressionist cubist painters in his work. One of the landscapes was of a boat dock at White Rock Lake. That is when I realized the painter was a Texas artist. I did not know until I read the catalogue that the MAC at its inception was determined to celebrate early Texas artists. I wondered why the art was not contemporary.

On particular painting stood out to me, its title was Man Mourning a Lost Hope. It isn’t hope in general, that is being mourned but a highly valued hope. The artist achieved that by composing the painting with a small figure seated at the bottom of a huge canyon like cityscape. It seemed to say to me that all the things that the world has to offer will be mourned, have the capacity to cause us to feel at loss. Looking at the art I knew I was at that place. I think if we are honest all of us have been there from time to time. There has to be something different. Like Solomon said in the book of Ecclesiastes, all is vanity and chasing after wind.

I have experienced a lot of loss but this sense of loss is different. It is a hope I had for myself, a personal goal, a sense of accomplishment. I don’t think that it is a bad thing to be at the end of, but that doesn’t make it less of a loss. It is giving up doing life my way. And when I looked at the painting I could no longer deny that there was a message in it for me that God had been waiting to deliver.