The pandemic is one year old. I believe this experience has permanently changed my character. These months have been a time of settling deeper into the things that have always inspired me.
This is the story about how I found myself standing at a Monet exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute, masked up, socially distanced, and at peace.
It started in March five years ago at an Oklahoma City Museum of Art exhibit “Intent to Deceive“. The museum gallery contained 60 works by some of the world’s most notorious con artists. I saw counterfeits of Picasso and an original double of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With A Pearl Earring. They were gorgeous.
The con artists had achieved such a high level of mastery that they developed their own legacies from the pristine quality of their fakes. A few had even hand-delivered counterfeit masterpieces to world-famous art institutions for handsome paychecks.
I enjoyed the exhibit thoroughly. The fakes were as sublime as the real thing; every paint tone and texture replicated to near perfection. Though, truthfully, I would have been the easiest to fool. I was not an artist. If someone had shown me the real painting, I probably could not tell the difference.
I recall clearly that the title of the exhibit also irked me. Intent to Deceive. Counterfeit. Fake. Fraud. Strong words. What did I belong in an art museum, anyway? Wandering alone with no art degree, no concrete idea of what I was staring at, nor how art is made, I dismissed my doubts and enjoyed the frauds.
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Ten years before my venture into the art museum, I was a fresh war veteran with significant emotional, mental, and spiritual challenges. I did not care at all for paint on a canvas.
One day I saw a painting by a Vietnam veteran. The artist was not famous, simply a friend of an older friend. The veteran painted an abstract portrait of a green woman with a gray head covering. She sat Mona Lisa-like towards the viewer, and her ghost face was nearly blank. The background was reddish-browns and more greens.
It was one of the most haunting art pieces I have seen. I stared at it often. Having recently returned from Iraq, I connected with it. Although I was conflicted inside, something about this strange image gave me serenity.
These are not your normal happy art stories. I get that. Most people probably come into an appreciation of art from the top-down schooling or free outpouring of inspiration. My connections happened without much of a plan. I just needed some image or idea that I alone could recognize. My habit of visiting museums was sporadic, maybe once or twice a year. I enjoyed regional galleries featuring local artists. Later, I would wander the Smithsonian’s and Modern Art Museums.
When the pandemic hit, I felt the impact of museum closures immediately. These places topped my list for public places to find peace of mind. (Next to the library, of course.)
By six months into the pandemic, I surprised myself one spontaneous afternoon by purchasing my own painting apparatus. A month later, I was creating my first ever abstracts. The painting helped me express how the pandemic made me feel. I had run out of words. So I let the canvass tell it. Speak it did.
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At the time of writing this, we have just passed the one-year mark of the global pandemic. Vaccines have provided some relief, even if it is just psychological. The spring season is days away, and the art museums are slowly opening their doors.
A rare opportunity to travel brought me to Chicago, whereupon I learned that the Art Institute of Chicago Institute had just reopened with a new exhibit of Monet. I bought a ticket even though the closing hour was imminent. The museum’s marble halls were overly spacious. In covid times, the sparse attendance felt like having an entire gallery to oneself. On a normal day, there would be gaggles of tour groups. Half would be following a dutiful museum guide, shepherding the flock to and from the famous works. The other half might be energetic kids making noise, or art fans taking turns for selfies.
Today there was silence. The portraits. Monet’s Water Lilies. His dream-like skies. I granted my full attention. I gasped. The experience of seeing such transcendent beauty was sensational.
The next day, I was still riding a high inspired by painting after painting. I thought, If I could live my whole life over again, I might have devoted myself to the study of art instead of the study of war. I have seen so much conflict. What might I have become without all that struggle?
I knew well, though, the pitfalls of this thinking.
In the real-life that I was given to live, I could not have known how to choose differently. Art was not a thing where I come from. Even if it was, my thoughts about life were how to fight and defend myself. I was versed in the more practical concerns of survival. The military just made me more efficient. Even so, my current love of art must have been lying dormant within me. Today I am cultivating the freshness which art gives to me. This is purposeful, not an accident.
I changed my thinking to this:
I will never be able to paint like Monet. Even if I studied with the best teachers for the next fifty years. However, this should not prevent me from giving what I have to offer.
I reasoned that I could take one day at a time, and give as truly as I can.
What kind of person would this make in 10 years? Could the balance of good years someday exceed the balance of years in the dark? Then I realized that good years to bad years is not a 1-to-1 ratio. Even a handful of days cultivating a love for something good outweighs many years in the dark.
There must have been a point in my past where I saw something worthwhile and moved closer to it. Tentative, at first. Unsure and questioning. I probably began my devotion to the study of art, love… some permanent higher purpose before I could articulate this. Now I am learning to embrace love unapologetically.
I will always know where to find my scars. Right now, I have more to become.
Art is good for the soul.
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