DO YOU SEE WHAT I SEE?

I saw this painting by Jorge Santos in a Santa Monica gallery recently and was absolutely captivated. Why? I’m not sure. Three people are packed together in odd juxtapositions with upside down dogs at their feet. They look spoiled, petulant and indolent. It’s riddled with hands and feet and flat out weird and I love it. I love the colors, the warmth and the closeness of the characters. I love the vibrancy, passion and virility of the moment. It reminds me of our universal self-absorption and does so in a bold, whimsical, accepting way.

Now maybe that’s not what the artist intended. Maybe I’m the only one who sees it like that. Maybe it’s because I play guitar and have worn a colander on my head. Or perhaps it’s just that I stretch my legs out like that or because the dogs remind me of Salvador Dali. God knows why I love it, but I do. I love it so much, that it makes me want to meet the artist! He has captured something about the way I feel or have felt. Maybe he even understands me and has gotten inside my head?

But let’s temper my passion with reality: I have zero talent for understanding art and have never purchased any. The only art in my house was either done by my children or friends. Sure, I’ve been to the Met, the Guggenheim and wandered through the National Gallery. I’ve perused the Museo Del Prado in Madrid and the Louvre in Paris where I stared at the original Mona Lisa up close and was hugely unimpressed.

I have no ‘eye for art.’ Ask my friends and family, I’m blind when it comes to the visual. I can’t tell the difference between plum and purple, struggle to match a blouse with a pair of pants or coordinate a rug with a sofa. If I have to attend a formal event, I have my kids dress me. So why this fascination with this painting now? No clue.

But I do know this: Sometimes it is enough just to be stirred by something or someone that captures your eye or your heart—even for a moment—a connection so real you can feel it—but so ethereal that you know you can never really hold it. And that is enough. All you need. All you dare ask.

P.S. Wearing a colander is a grand way to entertain the littles with secret messages you are picking up from Outer Space.