Artistic Impressions

I love art mostly because I want so desperately to be able to express myself using some form of art. I have tried and I found myself sitting before a blank page or a blank canvas wondering what in the hell I'm doing.
So, instead, I collect.
I'm not like Steve Wynn who collect priceless works of art by oh..say...PICASSO but I enjoy owning things I find beautiful.

I don't always love those realistic paintings of landscapes or still life. I want to see what the artist sees inside his head.
Sometimes that's pretty damn scary but sometimes it can be breathtakingly beautiful.

I wrote a small blurb a year or two ago about an artist I really love named Walter Falk. My boyfriend at the time and I discovered him back in 97 or 98. We bought a couple of pieces and then looked for him every year at the Bayou City Art Festival and would purchase one or two pieces.
When said boyfriend and I broke up, we split our collection and went our separate ways.

Falk disappeared from the art festival after a couple of years and we never found him again.

A few months ago, his son found my blog by (I'm assuming) doing a search for his father's name.
He emailed me to let me know his dad was still painting and would be in my area this weekend at the Artoberfest.

I was worried when the day started out with pouring rains and strong winds but luckily the weather cleared and it turned into a decent day for art.

I found Falk right away. He spoke to me as soon as I entered his booth but there was no way he would remember me, he must see thousands of people a year.
He spoke to me as I was looking at his paintings and I explained to him that his son sent me an email to let me know he would be there and suddenly he knew who I was and knew about my blog. He was able to repeat to me things I had written.
It was such a strange sensation.
When I wrote that small entry about this man, I never in a million years thought that he or anyone who knew him would read it.
The fact that he did and acknowledged it was surreal.

Each piece I picked up, Falk had a story about the inspiration behind it. He told me why he used certain colors and encouraged me to take them out into the sunlight to really see the differences in shades and textures.
He told me stories of being drunk in the Swiss Alps, going from brewery to brewery until he found his reason for being in Switzerland.
(He also let me know that he wasn't drunk yet that day and he'd been nursing a warm Lone Star beer for a while. No man should drink a warm beer on a hot day so I bought him a cold Shiner.)
To be able to discuss the actually painting with the artist and to know what was going through their mind when they put brush to canvas is amazing. I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be standing there talking to the man that creates such beauty.
He's a huge man, towering over me (with me at nearly 5'10" that's hard for someone to do!) but when he described something he witnessed that inspired him to paint a certain piece, the beer in his hand and his rough exterior disappeared and he became almost child-like in his awe of the world.

Falk uses acrylics and watercolors and ink; sometimes in the same pieces. I love that. I love the complexity and the use of color and the mixture of mediums.

I couldn't make up my mind. There were several paintings that I loved so he put them all side by side and that really helped me make my decision. I purchased two completely different pieces and although I love both, one of them really spoke to me. I stared at it all weekend, marveling at the unbelievable colors and the hidden details.

I don't know a whole lot about art and I certainly can't write with any great knowledge but I know what I like and I know what is beautiful to me.

Art and beauty are truly in the eye of the beholder.

PS: By the time I got to the art show, all paintings and the artist were dry.

Posted by De at October 23, 2006 10:29 AM | TrackBack