I appreciate art and I think it’s a beautiful form of expression. Fortunately, I’m gifted with finding my own art, but I love when you see a work just to understand the history that led up to the creation of that work or the time era when it was created, it’s just awesome.
One of the main reasons I came to Madrid this time was because I wanted to really see The Guernica by Pablo Picasso.
How did your fascination with art history evolve?
For me, art history and art itself has always been something that growing up my parents instilled in me like a love of appreciating other cultures and experiences. We’ve always had a book on the coffee table with famous paintings and I grew up looking at the pictures and seeing them and my parents took us to the museum when they could. You know, we didn’t have much money, but they tried to make sure we could be exposed as much as we could.
I remember when I first came to Europe by myself, I went to the Museu D’Orsay and I saw Renoir’s Picnic at the Moulin de la Galette and I just started crying. It was such an emotional experience because I could not believe that this painting that I had grown up seeing every day as a kid in a book that I didn’t really understand, was famous and I was able to see it in person.
I’ve had a couple of experience like that when I finally get to see a work of art just like move me to tears and I love. I just think it’s so amazing how things for artists can become different works.
When I was doing my thesis, I actually created my thesis was based on using principles of art therapy to help students reduce their anxiety through coloring like mandalas and the meditative practice of coloring. What the colors signified to them and being able to use the color and the drawing aspects to help talk through them and help them become self-aware of their anxiety and how that was impacting them in school.
So, I just don’t know I love art history and I can go on and on about it. When you look at a piece of art you can connect with someone who created this piece 10, 50, 400 years ago and try to get yourself in that same mindset and even if what you’re feeling isn’t what they intended there’s still this connection that like transpires between you and I think that’s beautiful, being able to form a human connection that may or may not still be here… I love art history!