So, I like art. I hope that’s not really a surprise to anyone, but it’s how we’re starting off this post. One of the things I miss most during the age of COVID is going to the MFA in Boston (even if, as my poem goes, I once found a typo there). It doesn’t much matter if the art is in a kind of museum like that, though. Galleries remain one of my favorite things to explore in any town, and in one of my previous relationships we would dress up all fancy-like (it was date night anyway so why not go all out) and visit galleries to see which ones would try and sell us on art that we, as fruitful college students we were, could most definitely afford. One even gave us a private showing of a few pieces with lamps representing how they would look under different lighting conditions and different times of day. Willing to sit through that is a requirement for exploring art.
It was in a decidedly less-ornate gallery, though, where I fell in love with the first painting I ever bought. “A Little Night Music,” by North Carolinian painter Sharyn Fogel. It hands now in my living room, and I am able to stare at it laying on my couch. I saved a combination of my first paychecks and birthday money to buy it from a gallery in Brevard, North Carolina.
Now, as much as I like art, I really have no idea how to talk or write about it. The technical terms escape me. I don’t know much about spacing or layout or format, or depth or field of vision or… any other terms besides those (just take a look at my photography (still need to update this)). But I have that sense that visual art, like music or writing, is meant to illicit a kind of emotion. Some kind, anyway. We like art for how it makes us feel, or what it makes us think. This painting made me feel a lot.
I know it’s watercolor, and the effect of watercolor paint adds to the sense of solemn whimsy I get from the overall piece. There’s a nice quality to the background colors that captures the more-than-blackness that is inherent in the beauty of a rural night (I write this from the family cabin in Vermont, as point of reference). Some stars are about, some bugs flit around. In the center of it all stands a girl with her trumpet (pretty sure it’s a trumpet), perfectly framed in pool of almost golden moonlight.
She’s playing it, alone, or so she thinks.
There at the far corner of the piece sits a small yellow dog (I’m calling it a dog, some people say it’s a cat). I don’t know if its hers, if it followed her there, or if it heard the music and wandered over to investigate. What I do know, or believe, is that at least in the moment the painting captures, it hasn’t disturbed the girl. She hasn’t stopped playing, and the dog (it IS a dog), sits and listens.
It’s hard for me to find the words (quoting Bojack Horseman: Aren’t you a writer?) to describe exactly what so drew me to the piece. The colors are nice, muted appropriately for the time of day, and set to draw your attention to the moon, the girl and her trumpet, and the dog. In the right light the trees around her become apparent, then the bugs and the grass, the whisper of a path on the ground. It’s all pleasant to look at it, but that’s aside from how it makes me feel.
She’s out there, performing even if she may not know she has an audience, creating in a moment for herself. She’s doing it, I feel, because she likes to, and at night maybe because she’s embarrassed, or learning, or both. Or, maybe, as so many of us know, there’s a pleasure in simply doing something you love by yourself, for you and for no one else. Dining out alone, reading a book, writing, singing in the shower. These moments of silent joy, unshared.
But if it’s art, as music is and this painting is, and as writing is, then there’s something more at least I interpret when I look at this painting (and I look at it a lot). Having now self-published a book, and working on many more, you’re always kind of wondering what people really think about your art, your creation. It’s a similar feeling when you cook for friends and want to make sure they like your food, or checking in with your boss after a long and hard service. Anxiety and hesitation, sure, but also a kind of satisfaction and some muted desire for, if not recognition, then acknowledgement.
Whatever she feels that makes her play the trumpet at night, I know I’ve felt it too.
We create because we love to create, I do anyway, and hopefully do what we do because we love those things too. Even if no one ever reads the things I write (and I can assure you from sales that I am no bestselling author), I know I would still write. I write for me, and put what I like the most out there for others. I love writing poetry for the same reasons, and photography. There’s something about capturing a moment in a creative act inherent to all these avocations I find enchanting. Like standing and playing music out into the void of night, maybe not wanting to be heard, maybe only to be heard by someone or something that can appreciate it, even if that means just yourself. Maybe it’ll strike a chord, maybe it won’t. As a creator, one may never get the sense that what you create has any impact on the world, or (as any writer can tell you looking back at old work), one may regret things they’ve already done. But it’s our way of yelling at the void, of making the world, or at least our worlds, a more beautiful place. It may only be for our lives, or for the moment, but that will never stop the drive to create. I hope it won’t, anyway. There’s something beautiful about it, like there’s something beautiful in this painting.
I’m also no great shakes at taking pictures of art, the glass frame is super reflective, but I’ll put my best shot at it below. Sit with it a bit, if you want, and maybe just enjoy it as a cool little panting.
And if you ever come to visit, I’ll ask you the same question that makes me stop and think every time I see it:
Do you think she knows someone’s listening?
