Thursday, November 18, 2010

Step Inside


There is a certain place on the sofa, if you are looking just so, where you can see it. I noticed it one day a few months ago, not long after we put new flooring in the bathroom. Yes, there was definitely a quality about it, but what? Could it be that all those years of studying one of my favorite artists of all time, Johannes Vermeer, caused me to unwittingly recreate one of his paintings in my living room? And I don’t mean painting an actual study of his paintings, though I have done that, too. No, I mean I am in a painting. At least when I am looking just so:

Can you see it, too? The red and black Persian rug, the black and white tile, the lute (okay, it’s a mandolin in my house, but still). Perhaps this is why I liked those items enough to purchase them in the first place. Maybe there was a subconscious yearning to connect with one of the true masters of art, and it spilled out all over my decorating sensibilities.

Whatever it was, the results are that at any given time in the day, I can sit in that spot on the sofa and feel sort of fuzzy inside. I have come to learn that the things we love become who we are, whether we know it or not. You are what you eat, so to speak. I love, love, love Vermeer. He used the same room in the same studio with the same props in practically every painting he ever did, and they are each one brilliant. If I must live in a painting, I'm sure glad it's a Vermeer.


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