Portrait of a Lady with Lap Dog

I was at the Art Gallery a few months ago, and I took my sketch book with me.  I stopped in front of a Rembrandt portrait and sat down on a portable stool.  I took out my pencil, and began, in the middle of the public, to sketch the painting.  It was not sculpture, and it had bright colors, but the combination was a muted result.  In any case, as I started to sketch, and as I finished it, in about ten minutes, I noticed that she did not have her nobility as in her painted portrait.  Maybe it was my mood that afternoon.  Maybe I felt overwhelmed and surrounded by regality, but my sketched portrait looked different.

There is an apprehension, completely opposite to her almost smugness, and comfort and confidence.  She wears heavy clothing, with many folds, and has a complex necklace, a bracelet, as well as a tiny dog that announces her nobility.  She is almost young… perhaps she is in her twenties, but the result of my pencil sketch, she is an old woman of forty.

I was by myself, and was not hurrying, or finding reasons to dally.  Even though I was not satisfied with my sketch, I did not feel defeat.  I got up, and began a dialogue with myself about the paintings I was passing.

I am very picky about what I like to sketch.  There were many paintings with the only interesting thing about them, their color.  Sometimes, the actual portrait or the colors of the landscape create a stiffness that I try not to copy into my sketch.  So, I ended up in a room full of paintings on the walls and four sculptures in the middle, in glass casing.

This time I took to the twentieth century.  A Pablo Picasso sculpture, just titled, “Head of a Woman” was one of the four sculptures.  It was in bronze, and played with light in a reflective manner.

Again, I sat down on my portable stool, and began a ten minute sketch.  This time, I only had light to help me understand.  It was not about personality, and it was not about status.  It was an abstract, conceptual idea of all women.  As I looked longer at it, I almost felt as if Picasso had successfully created a sexist and age-ist and racial derogatory statement.  The shapes in the head were sharp and angular, and it suggested a tallness, perhaps what a soldier would have, wearing a helmet and anticipating the entry into a battle on the field.

When I finished with it, neither sketch completely satisfied me.  I wanted to do something else….  But also, I had spent an hour already in the gallery.  I had to be at dinner reservation, also, downtown, in another hour.  So, I was in between hours, and I was feeling the pressure of the weight of time.  So, I made a deal with myself.  I wanted to be able to return to the Art Gallery, a tall artist, capable of doing art.  So, I decided to go to the special exhibitions of Contemporary Artists in one of the smaller exhibition rooms.  It was filled with paintings the size of the walls in the gallery.  Nothing like the paintings I had sketched.  They were filled with color, very neon, in several rooms, and also what could be considered rude, awkward, and dense.  I was glad I did go to this exhibition as it satisfied my need for Art to serve a public good and to do a public service.  As for the beauty of art as a reason in itself for existence, I still felt that this does not exist.  Irregardless, I am a fan of Art Galleries, and I will walk into a gallery for no reason other than to look at the work.