Music for your eyes

I’ve been looking for a picture, a painting or a design for my room for over a year. I wanted something that the minute I saw it, I knew it was mine.

Every single place I looked, every single store I searched was another failure. I never found anything that could make me feel something. Yes! Some were very pretty, nostalgic or even intense, but they didn’t call to me.

Let me tell you something: If you have to see it every single day, it definitely needs to call to you otherwise is not worth it.

It became a habit to walk into any art store and look around, always expecting the same outcome: nothing getting my attention, always the same numb feeling. But last week, something happened. A painting called to me…

It felt so alive and bright, and it was talking to me so loud that I couldn’t resist it. Without really knowing the name of the artist and the name of the piece I simply bought it… When I had the receipt in one hand, and the order for framing in the other, I decided to ask the salesman: Who made the painting? And he answered: W. Kandinsky.

The moment I was in front of a computer I (of course) Google the name and read a little bit about his story, I realize he had been, not only a famous painter, but a gifted musician.

“Wassily Kandinsky (1886 - 1944) is considered to be the originator of abstract art, and believed that art could visually express musical compositions. Kandinsky, who was also an accomplished musician, saw color when he heard music, and associated a color’s tone with musical timbre, hue with pitch, and saturation with the volume of sound. Music influenced his art to such a degree that Kandinsky named his works after musical terms. Originally a lawyer in his native Russia, he was inspired to study art at age 30, after seeing Monet’s “Haystacks.” Kandinsky was gripped by a compulsion to relentlessly create, and believed that if this drive were pure, it would evoke a correspondingly powerful response in viewers of his work.”

I realized then, why I liked the painting so much. It was music! Music for your eyes! I never thought that was possible but it is. There is no other way to describe the feeling it brings out in me, familiar, yet out of place for a painting, and then, I knew it.

It was familiar because it is the same feeling you get when you listen to a song you love, you immediately feel the need to nod your head or move your feet or jiggle with your fingers along with the music; only it was not music, It was only colors and lines.

I got a call yesterday, the painting was framed and ready, and now it’s mine, all mine. This is my first art purchase, and I am impressed... I never knew how much a piece of paper, colors and lines could make you feel, especially when it calls out to you…

And finally I knew what it was called: Bustling Aquarelle, c.1923