A different way of looking at things

A guy I knew once told me that he needed to "mess with his brain" - well actually he put it a bit more crudely than that. What he meant was he needed the challenge all the time to make him tick. he didn't do social niceties and he didn't do friends (the people not the show) that much etc.

I'm just doing my first assignment for my Foundation Course but also finishing off the section on Paul Cezanne. Now, before I'd spent much time on this, I'd have told you that the guy surely couldn't command the sort of respect when (and I have actually seen some in the flesh) he couldn't paint and that there was little that made me want to get involved in the picture. Interesting because anyone who knows me does know that I try and give everything a fair chance and if it doesn't float my boat I'll just move on.

So Cezanne; what can I say but a new way of looking at it. It isn't a 2D flat, did you run out of paint half way through? Type of view now. I'd never ever thought of art as emotion on a canvas. A Dutch Master like Vermeer - now that was always my view of the world and suddenly it is quite liberating to "get it" after all these years. Cezanne's work now looks very different indeed after going back and looking at it again with fresh eyes. Bring it on!! :-)

I find this whole learning process messing with MY brain - and do you know what? It's really great. I feel quite cheated that my old school and the system never gave me this opportunity when I was younger. In a way some of that is my fault too but you don't get it when you are a kid and certainly not when you were turfed out of school at 16 into the real world to go get a job.

Better late than never and I hope it opens my mind to some more of this that tears down my long held views and makes me look at things differently. Who knows what will happen next?