This love affair began long ago.
It started with a song as many do.
He wasn’t the first of course.
The works of many others had been paraded before my young eyes.
I was trailed around galleries and the stately piles of the great (and good?).
I was entreated to look upon those majestic paintings of old
Paintings of people with simpering looks in grand attire.
“Look how beautiful they are. It was the age of elegance, so refined.
What do you think dear, do they make your heart lift?”
I thought silence and a smile was my best defense.
The silence lasted a bit too long, no, silence wouldn’t do and an answer was required.
A comment on the colours of the dress seem to suffice and we could move on.
Oh the paintings were pretty enough, don’t get me wrong.
The women with delicate faces and dressed in pretty frocks holding funny looking little dogs.
The men all in smart uniform often in the company of an equally smart horse.
After a while thought they all drifted into one.
Behind the smile my mind drifted to the ice cream I could have on the way home.
It was the song that changed it all.
It was the song that first made me notice him.
That catchy little tune that made me smile and my feet tap.
Then my eyes were drawn to the pictures behind the song.
They made me smile too.
They made my heart lift.
These weren’t simpering people in grand attire.
I saw real people, not perfect people, but people with movement going about life.
These were matchstick men and matchstick cats and dogs.
The painter was L. S. Lowry.
The houses he painted all in a row were the ones I recognised.
The dogs on the street, the chimneys belching out their smoke.
These were what I still saw around me every day.
He painted the muck and the grime of everyday life.
Almost secretly he capture the hidden spirit of life as well.
His paintings didn’t show a world I didn’t connect to or recognise.
This was how a love affair began.
A love affair with Lowry but also with art that shows life.
Art I can find an understandable logic in, whether it’s in images or words.
Art I connect too from the heart.
Inspired by Magaly Guerrero and her prompts for Aprils NoPoWriMo 2015.
1st of April 2015
The Birth of Your Art
Base your first poem on the first work of art that inspired your creative addiction.
Base your first poem on the first work of art that inspired your creative addiction.
4 comments:
Jane -Your young eyes saw an elegance that transcends ruffles and velvet and lace. This is true beauty.
Nice. I know just what you're talking about with women with delicate faces and funny looking dogs and smart looking men and horses. Sometimes art is boring, until it's not. ;-)
Elena
Finding that first piece of art that connects with a bit of our soul, yes, it's a bit like a first kiss.
I love this poem! Wonderful story of falling for art!
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