Impressionism
Looking at images of impressionist paintings as a child in a book I was amazed. These paintings were so pretty, I like the textures and bright colors of the works. As I grew up I learned more about he school of painting and the philosophy. No wonder the paintings were so colorful there were actually supposed to be paintings of light more than paintings of form and object or color. Those are secondary to the light. They cannot be perceived visually without light. The first time I was fortunate enough to see some great impressionist works was at the National Gallery in Washington DC. This is an enormous museum filled with thousands of art works from virtually every age, era, time and type. The impressionist paintings are all in one series of galleries. I love to look at the paintings examining the texture and brush strokes. How one artist mastered water and another flowers, another sky, another clouds. How the atmosphere was captured in landscapes of hot humid summer afternoons. The paintings are ground breaking in their approach. Painting light, making light the primary focus of painting and thinking of color in scientific ways relating opposite and contrasting colors side by side not because it is exactly what is being seen but communicates to us on a deeper level. Having access to see the paintings in person over the printed images is invaluable. The ability to see the textures and the brush strokes of the paint and layering of the colors just cannot be deserved from a printed image, no matter how good the image is. From the best Cape Town hotels I was able to stumble on a small museum with a nice showing of impressionist work. There were some lesser known pieces of some very famous artists and fine pieces of lesser known artists works there on exhibit. It is always nice to stumble on a good showing of art.
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