January certainly hasn’t been a break, although I am lucky to have found a couple of days this past holiday weekend to escape to a different city. I visited a friend who lives and attends university in Washington D.C., also meeting an interesting array of new people. It was my fifth time in D.C. and lets just say that I’m always happy to return to crazy but fantastic NYC. We (the boyfriend and I) visited the monuments, paying homage to MLK Jr., and of course, my favorite, toured the National Gallery.
The National Gallery has a special place in my heart (corny, but true!). It was my first semester as a freshman and also the first time I was visiting this same best friend. I wanted to see everything I could possibly see before leaving for home, and having spent longer than I thought in this particular museum, I was running through the exhibits (eek!) to catch up with the rest of my friends. Although blurred, I remember seeing a face through my peripheral vision that pierced me, leaving such a great impression without actually having looked directly at the frame, that I stopped mid-run without consciously being aware of why. When I came closer to the portrait, I recognized van Gogh’s face from my elementary art classes. I had never seen his actual work except through reproductions. It is unbelievable how much emotion I felt, literally being hypnotized by the eyes glaring at me with a look of pure disgust. I am not sure if it was my own state of mind that I had projected onto one of van Gogh’s own self portraits, or if it was the artist’s own feeling, but regardless it stuck with me, enough that I made the effort to write a paper about the experience towards the end of that semester in my horrendous English 110 course.
In a letter to his brother, van Gogh wrote: I want to get to the point where people say of my work that man feels deeply.
That said, on a lighter note, I finally chopped off 15+ inches of hair. It is crazy that I no longer have anything to hide behind, nor can I feel or see the crazy shapes and motions the wind once made when it used my hair as it’s medium. I now look something like this:
(I wish Matisse painted me!)
