Reading a Painting

This "Reading a Painting" page shows a way to look at the esoteric meaning of a painting (in this case an acrylic painting), before evaluating other characteristics.

CHAINS, acrylic on canvas, cm. 70 x 50, 2007


You can "read" the acrylic painting above, without paying much attention. You look at its colours and technique, at the cheeky eyes of the doll, at the scene represented. You listen within if it is agreeable, which emotions come up and if you can syntonize with what you are experiencing…Or you can be a more careful observer and ask yourself, which message comes from the painter. You can then perceive the particular bond between the two girls (the title of the acrylic painting specifies the effect of this bond).

Furthermore, you can look at a painting in two different ways: driven by emotions or in an intelligent way.

People, who look at a painting with intelligence, are aware of its value and they can say they understand an artwork. The only way is to try to understand what the artist tells us through images. Only then, we can evaluate its significance, the interest it awakes, or the skill of its author.

In most cases, however, our inner filters stop or divert the artist’s message and, if it concerns us closely, we’ll try to turn our eyes elsewhere or to adopt an attitude of indifference or superiority.Images, as well as sounds, can open or close our hearts. From a painting, we can get great joy and a feeling of well-being, or sense a great disturbance. We can say we are attracted by both conditions and what we categorically refuse is only what we don’t want to see within us!

The world is an image, but two people staying before the same porthole don’t see the same things. While the one is moved by the colours of sunset, the other is amazed by the immensity of space.Everybody has his own interests to pursue, his own goals to accomplish, his own emotions and aspirations to fulfil and he uses everything around to get it. Everybody takes from the landscape before him the nuances he needs to colour his life, to go further, to live his next adventure.

All this seems logical to our minds, but we neglect to remember that our preferences are based on choices of colours, of emotions, of reactions and, finally, of life.

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