I left the lake today. The quiet lake. I took this photo to capture that: how fully I felt. The quiet.

Very few people are around. But many are online. And so is so much else: lots of art. Which made this particular paragraph in Broad Strokes stand out for me:

(preface: it was written by Bridgett Quinn who grew up in Montana and had only seen art in books and slides. She could just as well have said … online. She was sure she wasn’t missing anything.) And then she realizes:

I was wrong. What I discovered … in New York was the necessary and exhausting emotion of confronting art itself. The messy, sexy, physically unnerving shock of THE REAL. That paintings can seduce you, sicken you, haunt you.

Who hasn’t had that experience? Of being so affected by the painting/art itself that you wondered how it could possibly do that? Wham! The REAL can do something that no reproduction can.

And yet, every time we do see a reproduction, in some way, it’s an invitation. Like the very first art: that silhouette cast by light made to remember the girlfriend. It was not the girl.

But it keeps the bond. And hopefully, all those images – hopefully, they lead back to the source: to the painting/art itself. With all that’s behind it. Conveyed through it.

To the real.

The full impact.