Woolthing

Not that we’re wimps here on the west coast … oh yeah, we are.  The thing is we don’t have air conditioning.  I could go to the mall but … then I’d be in hell.

Yesterday, I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery to check out the Dutch Masters of the 17th Century Exhibit.  My heritage is Dutch after all and I’m a fan of Vermeer, even before that movie.  I was a bit underwhelmed, I’m afraid.  There was one small Vermeer and a couple of Rembrandts.  There were plenty of paintings and I did enjoy it, I just expected more.  It is always great to see the original when all you’ve seen is prints.  There is a spark that you can’t explain.

Most of the painting had such detail that you could look at them for a long time and still see something new.  Unfortunately, there were lots of other people wanting to see so, it would have been rude to take up a space for too long.  I didn’t buy the catalogue.  I’m getting tired of everything being about money and yes,  I know that the gallery has to pay it’s own way.  I’m not going to get into how the government should do better job of supporting the arts.  It is the soul of the people after all.

And the homeless.  As I walked up Robson Street, the shoppers meca of Vancouver, I can’t help be turned off of our never ending spending on the newest and brightest when there is a homeless person holding out a cup for some change or scavenging in a garbage pail for the food that someone else just threw away.  Poverty sucks.

But it actually takes me back to the paintings.  In one very large painting (sorry don’t remember the artist) there was a fair of some sort with people of all kinds.  There were the refined, wealthy people in their silks and ribbons and there were also the pick pockets and the street people of that day.  Nothing much has changed.  And one of the themes, of many of the painters, was that for all our wealth and striving after the stuff of the world, we will all die and return to dust.  It seems that they foresaw the decline of the prosperous Dutch Empire.

I’m not ready to give up all my worldly goods and I still get a lot of joy out of life and the things I do but when I looked in the shops I just kind of went,  mmmhwa.

Or maybe it’s just the heat.