Art--Now That's Always a Good Subject!

I woke up this morning feeling awful.  I've been fighting something or other--a bad cold (possibly a sinus infection) and a queasy stomach, which is not surprising considering that most of my family members got sick either before, after, or during the Christmas holidays. Not a great way to ring in the New Year, is it?

I don't feel much like writing, and I've been sitting here at my computer thinking, "What to blog about... what to blog about?"  It's a holiday, after all, so I considered just taking a day off from the blogosphere altogether (something I've been very good at these days!); but then I decided that I'd do a quick post about art.  Art--now that's always a good subject!  When you feel lousy, or you're down, or life seems colorless, there's no better antidote to cure the blahs than looking at a beautiful piece of artwork--or a piece that might not be beautiful to someone else, but has the ability to lift your one-of-a-kind soul.

For Christmas, son #3's girlfriend turned a photo of my twin granddaughters into a legitimate work of art.  She had it made into a 16 x 20" canvas stretched over wood, like a painting.  It is so beautiful that it knocked the picture collage of my toddler sons in their sailor suits out of its long-held spot above the fireplace in our living room.  Feast your eyes, people.  This is art at its finest.

Once this masterpiece took over the wall above the mantle, I shifted around the rest of the artwork in the room, and a large pastel drawing I'd done back in 1990 didn't make the cut.  I had used a snapshot of my two oldest sons playing at Cliff Haven Beach in the summer of 1986 as a model for it.

I had matted and framed it myself, and when I took it out from under the glass yesterday to store it away, I noticed it had gotten discolored along the lines where the mat had been. But I got looking at it...and musing that if I took a picture of it and had it printed on canvas like the photo of my little cutie pies above, it might look like a more professional piece. So...I'm thinking about having that done someday soon.  Although this is an amateur work, it makes me happy to look at it, because it evokes that time in my life when my boys were little, and the happy summer days we spent in Upstate NY at their grandparents' house.

And that's the whole purpose of art, isn't it--to make you happy when you look at it?  Critics will always disagree on what's good art and what's not (can we talk about Jackson Pollock?!), but the only important thing as far as art is concerned is that it is pleasing to the viewer's eye.

Here's hoping that 2013 is just filled to the brim with beauty, peace, and happiness.  Happy New Year!