National Gallery

The National Gallery yesterday...wow

Just try to remember 5th or 6th grade humanities when your teacher so boldly tried to teach you who Monet, and Vincent Van Gogh were. And though it may not have been significant or meaningful to you for some reason you will ALWAYS remember the images of their paintings these artists so beautifully mastered...even though you had no respect or appreciation for them.

BUT THEN!! You're wandering around the HUGE National Gallery looking at the TONS AND TONS of paintings and you look over, and there it is. A painting of sunflowers done by Van Gogh himself, and even though you didn't care before, now it feels like you just saw a celebrity. 'Cause there it is!! I've seen so many pictures of this painting through my whole life that to actually see it, just sitting there mounted on a wall was like finishing a 19 year long game of Where's Waldo. I knew what it looked like but I had finally found it. And that's not the only one. There were Davinci's and Rembrandts too, and once again I'm reminded Frances you're in LONDON! and I get super excited like I just barely arrived.

Being someone who never really appreciated art before...I'm repenting. In our walks class we go to gallery's and spend hours, and one of the challenges is to sit and look and write about a painting for half an hour. the painting I stared so intently at was by Johannes Vermeer "Young woman standing at a virginal" I still don't know what a virginal is...and I need to find out so...research is on it's way! But for some reason this one painting kept coming back to me and I wanted to study it. OF COURSE it was the one painting that was in a room with no bench. So like a real art student I sat on the floor and let annoyed tourists snap pictures and walk around me. I stared at this picture for ever and wrote about what I saw and what I felt. Even when I didn't really understand it, it felt like that painting was made just for me. Just for this one day of sitting in a museum; Johannes Vermeer painted this picture so I would be completely amazed and dumbfounded by a girl painted in 1672 who seemed to be staring into my soul.....

I love London.