if I could leave this blank I would

Last night, I had the opportunity to attend an art show. The artist in question is very talented . Her paintings are, in my very uneducated opinion, the sort that really qualify as “art.” In other words, they mean something. Someone might buy one of her paintings because it spoke to them, because what it said to them was deeply important and perhaps difficult for them to express in any other way themselves. These are not the type of images which one might simply buy, oh.. because the colors match the couch in the back room.

Not surprisingly, while wandering around in the little coffee shop where the show happened, my mind was racing. Not only did I have the images in front of me to process, but I had a whole other conversation going on with myself about larger concepts like: What is art? Why does it matter? What makes these paintings meaningful? What would take away that meaning?

I have no idea, of course, but I can’t help wondering and pondering and thinking about things that I have no idea about, so I did it anyway.

One thing I came up with was that the paintings had recognizable symbols and imagery. I didn’t have to stare at it at a loss for twenty minutes only to finally read in the artist’s notes that the red spot on the left represents the frailty of human life while the green lines represent the fatalistic view of mortality imposed by the rigidness of a totalitarian regime, or whatever other nonesense. I looked at the paintings and they meant something to me.

Not being highly educated in the field of art, one or two of the paintings honestly did leave me at a loss, to an extent. But, they still meant something to me. It was only that I could not put into words exactly what they were saying to me. I could stand and stare at them for hours, for years, however, and continue to feel that meaning, which would no doubt evolve and change as I grew and became more familiar with the pieces. One day, I may even be able to express that meaning in something resembling coherent speech. That, to me is the difference between art and something that hangs on the wall for decoration.

Go see for yourself: Tamara Stephas Visual Arts