random late night thoughts...

I’ve been lusting after art on e-Bay again, I’m not sure why. Well, I know what triggered it...a painting that I fell in love with a little over a year ago and didn’t bid on then, has shown up again for auction. This time I’ve not only bid, but I’ve sniped. Dunno if I’ll get it, though. I thought about it awhile, and placed my maximum bid, but I have no idea if my bid will be the winning bid. So far (and it’s been up for a week) there isn’t a single other bid, but that can be deceptive. There are other bidders lurking, out there like me, more often than not.

I don’t like a lot of the other stuff done by this artist, but this painting...there’s something there. It’s small: just: 9" x 12", unframed, oil on board, done no later than the mid-1950's, although I don’t know the exact date. It’s a portrait of a young girl, perhaps 12, at the beach. Her face is sunburned, her expression almost sullen...but oh, so incredibly beautiful. Her blond hair is in braids, with dark blue ribbons at her ears. I’m not sure what it is about this painting that so captivates me, but there is something there. I didn’t bid on it the first time I saw it because I thought it would be odd, and I guess it is odd, to contemplate hanging a portrait of a child, not my child, in my home, and more specifically, in my bedroom, for that is surely where I will hang this portrait, if I win it, to have the pleasure of seeing it every day.

My life as a kid was so spare, so...to have rugs on the floors, vases of flowers, and walls of books, punctuated by the occasional, beautiful painting...I never get over the lushness, the luxury, of that. In the past few years, I’ve bought a number of paintings on e-Bay, and, contrary to what I was warned by one killjoy friend before I began occasionally purchasing paintings in this way, I’ve never been disappointed. A good painting is almost a living thing, so vibrant...I never get over the pleasure of looking at them. All good art - painting, music, writing - feeds something inside us that needs to be fed...