L’art

Being in France this summer, and being able to witness some of the greatest art in the world was a once in a lifetime experience. I have been drawing/painting/sculpting and just creating in general since before I can remember, and as an artist you can’t not appreciate the most famous artists in history, especially after studying them. In the Musee d’Orsay, I couldn’t believe that I was standing in a room full of Van Gogh’s paintings, then in the next room over there was Picasso. And Renoir. And many others. And beaucoup d’art from other eras and artists that were important parts of art history. But then, if I thought I couldn’t take that all in, we visited le Louvre.

With our study abroad group we only had a few hours there, we popped a quick hello to Mono Lisa and sped walked through ancient Greek tablets and Renaissance Art. Fortunately, I was able to come back with my sister (who is also an artist) and we spent an entire day there. It was astounding. I stood in front of paintings that were bigger than my barn and older than my giant pine trees. I was inches away from art and ceramics that dated back to 3,000 B.C. and beyond. I saw things that belonged to/during Ramses II. My sister and I kept trying to retrace our steps but instead we kept getting lost, which I thought was hilarious and very fun.

Being able to see so many things from history was both hard to absorb and life changing. I love how we still celebrate our past by opening museums and letting the rest of the world see what a legitimate vase from ancient Greece looks like, or the giant pillars from an ancient Chinese tomb. Or the great painters and sculptors of the Renaissance like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Raphael, and many others. As a girl from a small town, art was not always seen as something of value, hardly anything above “cool” by those around me, so being able to see five hundred year old plus paintings that changed the way we view art, people, and society, was an affirmation to me of the importance of art, an of course, it broadened my perspective and personal connection to history.