Museum Day – KAHLO
February 2025 – Dallas, TX
I am sitting at the Dallas Museum of Art in front of Frederic Church’s The Icebergs, a massive 8’ x 12’ painting of icebergs rendered in luminous greens and browns, with a broken ship’s mast in the foreground.
If asked what my favorite painting is, this would be it. It represents the antithesis of everything I find frustrating about life. Here, there are no thoughtless or cruel people. No one to please. No one in need because of their own failed responsibilities. It is adventure. It is freedom. It is cold.
There is so much about this painting that is unreal and unattainable—a safe dream. I can sit here, in the final 30 minutes before the museum closes, and just bask in it. It is glorious.
Standing before it feels like waiting to go through a doorway to a place so completely out of space and time that I could forget every woe and discomfort I can imagine. The pull of those solitary monoliths is as immense as they are.
We spent the day taking in a few hours of Frida Kahlo and then a show of marginalized artists.
I love Kahlo. Her art doesn’t swell me with emotion, but I am attracted to her story and the passion she managed in her troubled life. The absolute honesty in her work is fascinating. I aspire to that. How does one overcome the fear about how they would be perceived if peers saw complete exposure?
The struggle to be honest in one's work is among my greatest battles. I long to be open and naked in what I write and paint, but strong fear of man prevents me. Not the generic 'they're all going to laugh at me' fear that presents as personal audience syndrome... my fear is of those who know me best.
In my mid-fifties and born from a childhood of traumatic violence and a longing for acceptance I have spent a lifetime hiding my genuine feelings. This reticence and Frida's unfettered honesty is where our edges meet and sparks fly. I want to be set on fire and have that willingness to be soulfully nude.
Only, I fear that hers is born from a desperation of knowing not what else to do. Whereas I have managed so far to find relative contentment and peace. Perhaps I am just greedy wanting more?
The best part of Frida Kahlo's show was the sketches. She famously did not do preparatory drawings and so I’ve seen only a scant few. But today I had the chance to study a dozen or more original pencil explorations. They were wonderful—unpolished, free from the burden of presentation. This is why I love sketchbooks. They offer a glimpse into raw thought.
Here we see torn pages, we see smudges—unerased, uncorrected... the filth of making art. THIS is where the real magic of creativity happens.
Even though we celebrate the polished pieces, the frames and the glamour—the drawings are where the real energy is.
I wish she and Diego had remained loyal to each other. I understand the pull between certain people, the gravity that defies reason, but don’t quality men and women deserve the work it takes to resist those tidal forces? To stay together for the greater good of both souls?
The When You See Me exhibit—meant to highlight marginalized voices—was less inspiring. The work was okay, but it didn’t move me. Maybe it wasn’t good. Some pieces were clever, but in my opinion, the technique didn’t warrant the attention, and the narratives felt shallow. But perhaps I’m just aging out of the conversation, no longer in tune with what these 30 or so artists were trying to lay down.
The permanent collection, however, had moments of real resonance. I walk these halls as two people—the me in the moment and the me that belongs to those I have loved. Art does this. It lifts me out of time, makes me both celebrate and regret at once.
Love. The emotion is always love and longing. This is good art. The kind that doesn’t wake the demons in my soul, the ones that bring disdain and disgust. Instead, I feel full—bursting with joy.
Art is not a commodity. This is the lesson I learn every time I visit a museum or gallery. It is a living, breathing part of the universe and to cut ourselves off from it is to stop breathing, eating or sleeping. We need these places and we need the work. We need to MAKE the work. Art let's us open our souls to the outside and blow out the cobwebs that collect while our inner selves lie fallow in a world focused on on efficiency and profit.
We need art. It is life.
#art #travel #essay #memoir #dma #confession #osxs #write #100daystooffload
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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