A Note from Natalie

Natalie is the resident writer, but not an expert. For expert advice, please book a consultation with Dr Quinn

There are no rules to liking art.

People might pretend that there are, but really there aren’t.

Sometimes it’s just nice to stand in front of a beautiful painting and let the colours wash over you… soothe you.

Abstraction White Rose, 1927

I did a lot of standing in front of paintings being absorbed and delighted this week when I went to the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibition at London’s Tate Modern, and if you have the chance to go and see this show before it closes next week, I can recommend it.

Not for any gallant reasons about women artists, or for any particular theories on form, Modernism, subtext…

But because each room offers you a new kind of beauty. And beauty is a lovely thing to experience.

Black Mesa Landscape, New Mexico / Out Back of Marie’s II, 1930

Peer into the whites and shadows and see dozens of colours hidden within, gaze into the heart of the landscape and feel the breadth and space of it fill you up – drink it all in and go out into the world refreshed.

But most of all, feel the inkling – the little stirring that is the ripple made by someone who sees things entirely unique to themselves – whose eyes are open, whose soul is shimmering. Those people are as mysterious and intriguing as the moon on a pale mesa…

‘I wish you could see what I see out the windows – the earth pink and yellow cliffs to the north – the full pale moon about to go down in an early morning lavender sky behind a very long beautiful tree-covered mesa to the west – pink and purple hills in front and the scrubby fine dull green cedars – and a feeling of much space – It is a very beautiful world.’
Georgia O’Keeffe

Georgia O’Keeffe and Orville Cox- Canyon de Chelly National Monument, 1937
Ansel Adams