How the light plays
The light in a room will change the color of a painting.
Light reflected interferes but also draws attention to the lines in a painting. Sometimes the canvas' texture becomes obvious. Colors once hidden are revealed.
Direct light can give a dull painting a glow it doesn't otherwise have. Or it can amplify one color over another, changing the way the colors play off one another.
And an obvious shadow falling in the left corner (above) changes the color with immediate effect showing side-by-side how light plays upon the canvas in the moment.
I've been to museums throughout my life. Each time I find myself disappointed knowing that some aspects of the art are hidden. Unable to touch a statue, to feel its coldness, the depth and texture of its lines, is an incomplete experience, a sort of sensory deprivation. I'd only imagined caressing a small Henry Moore statue. To see Moore's sketches, his plans, was a way to bridge the gap, somewhat. At last I saw his outdoor statues and discovered their warmth as they sat in the sun. Their surfaces were a different texture than I'd expected.
Unable to step close enough to see the way the strokes play and the colors mesh together, I was drawn into the depth of the brush work of Monet's Parliament Houses, scolded to step back behind the line. Later, to see other of his works hidden behind glass, the very light he studied was altered by the reflection of the museum lights.
There was that time I longed to touch the border of an Edvard Munch pieta image with small little wiggles resembling swimming sperm. They seemed to almost float.
Unable to see how a color was caught by dried brushwork, not touching a canvas of cardboard from an East German exhibition after the Berlin Wall came down, was another denial.
Not knowing the smell of the dust on a mummy under glass, wondering if the scent of death somehow still clung to it now millennia had passed.
Standing dumbstruck under the immense size of Titian's rape of Lucretia. Blind to the fear in her face, my attention was drawn to the luminescence of her naked skin, the detail of the baubles on her neck, but more, the velvety fabric of Tarquin's pants. So realistic, I was amazed at the skill required to create cloth from paint. I wanted to see if it felt as smooth and thick as it seemed.
Roman and Greek busts and breasts that really needed to be stroked, the lines of the hair, a nostril, an ear untouched. I expected a breath to be expelled but could not get close enough.
It's never been enough to merely see the museum pieces. I've always wanted to own and create art for those sensations. I can take them off the wall and hold them. I can move them if the light in the room doesn't compliment the light captured in the painting. To own art, any art, is truly a wonderful thing.
