Fine Arts?

When I was growing up, I used to love the picture of the dog eating the little girl’s ice cone. It was hanging in my room along with the fiberboard cut outs of Little Bo-Peep and her lost sheep (magically reunited on my wall).

In the living room, there were framed pictures of some flowers broken down with all of their parts labeled, and there were two framed pictures from Heidelberg, Germany sent to my grandmother from my uncle who was stationed there in the early 1950s.

When we moved “over the mountain” in 1958, my mother spruced up the den (our first such room) with K-mart framed Paris street scenes (which she bought in a packet at the department store warehouse sale). She bought some really nice large “flower prints” which she had professionally framed. She gave the Heidelberg prints back to my uncle after my grandmother passed away in 1957.

I took art in elementary school, but mostly that was working with modeling clay and finger paints. There was no mention of fine art. Somehow I managed to graduate from high school and college and never visit an art museum or learn anything about the art world. Not totally living in a cave, I had heard of Picasso, Van Gogh and Monet and maybe a few others. But if you asked me anything about their art, I would have to have said – “I have no clue.”

I was about to receive my Master’s degree and had to also take the National Teacher’s Exam. Word was you had best know something about fine art to pass this exam. Oops! As it happened, the night before I was to take the test, I was able to borrow a slide show of the famous works of art from the library where I was working as a graduate assistant. That night, my future husband (with a fine prep school education) was able to give me a crash course in matching artists with their works. Sure enough, those same pictures were on the test!

On our honeymoon, my husband insisted we buy an oil painting of a the Flamboyant trees at Ramey Air Force Base, painted by a member of the Officers’ Wives’ Club.

In the years that followed we bought more and more art. During our stint in southern California we bought some paintings by Edmond Woods, whose art we fell in love with at a Palm Spring Gallery. Other paintings followed, along with some pencil signed and numbered prints by local fine artists and enamels on copper purchased at school fundraiser art auctions. I picked up some nice prints from the Cayman Islands.

When we moved into our new house in 1992, we re-assessed our art, including reviewing pictures inherited from my parents. I found those large framed flower prints of my mother’s and they are in the living room. In my father’s papers, I some nice prints of Birmingham scenes, so I got them framed and they hang in our downstairs family room. Suffice to say that we have art all over the walls throughout the house. Nothing we have is that valuable, but we like it – each piece brings back memories.

These days, we frequent art galleries wherever we find ourselves in the world. My favorite art destination, however, is Giverny, Monet’s Garden. My favorite art museum is the Brandywine River Museum, in Chadd’s Ford, PA – the showcase of Wyeth family art. There is something special about both of these places. You can somehow sense the connection between the reality of the location and how it is reflected in the art. That is the magnet that keeps drawing me back to both places in different seasons.