Sunday Nostalgia

I walked up to the Art Museum this past Sunday after spending a beautiful afternoon at the Earth Day festivities with some friends at Forest Park. No one else wanted to go, so I went alone which is fine by me and how I usually prefer to do it. I like to take my own time occasionally lingering in favorite galleries, and being the student of art that I am, company tends to cloud my thoughts. I'm also a loner of sorts.

Max Beckmann's room is always reviewed when I visit. I never get tired of these, huge, dark paintings- they have haunted me for years, and they enchant me in an indescribable way. The meaning of their mysterious narratives elude me, so I must always return to my work at understanding them, hour & hours over the decades I've come to study them. The Beckmann in Paris show I attended  in 1999 really captured me, juxtaposing the artist's work next to that of his contemporaries during his years there. I will never get over that show, his paintings, or his room in the Museum.

Coming out of the Museum and back down the hill I had the most intoxicating whiff of nostalgia, the years of visiting all rushing back to me- when I first came as a St. Louis resident and young painter with big dreams 14 years ago, taking my then 5 yr old niece there to draw, visiting with my college painting class in the early 90's, holding hands with my high school sweetheart wandering through the galleries, visiting as a child with my mother...  I hadn't felt that way in awhile. Maybe it was the warm, sunny afternoon, or freshly mowed grass, or both combined with some favorite old paintings. Whatever it was I was bowled over by it, like my life flashing before my eyes or something. I wish I could bottle that...