ESSAY-April 2009

by Rebecca Falzano

“One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes.” —Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009)

With the buzz of cocktails and jazz from the mezzanine still fresh, I bounded down the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art into the nighttime symphony of taxi horns on Fifth Avenue, and purchased my first work of art. I was just out of college and an immense, pulsating New York was still new.

The painting spoke to me from a table just outside the museum, squeezed between a hotdog cart and a man selling roasted nuts for two dollars a bag. I stopped dead in my tracks, eyes fixed on a print by an artist whose name—to this day—is difficult to decipher. It was minimalist: an aerial scene of a brilliant blue sea with a solitary white rowboat in the center. The blue of the sea is what first caught my eye. It could have been an ocean anywhere in the world, but the artist informed me it was the Adriatic, a sea whose elusive color is known to change from a distinct greenish blue to a deep blue, depending on the time of day. Eventually my eyes focused on the shape of the boat inside the aquamarine. Something about it was lonely. After talking with the painter for several minutes, I heard a few pages from his story. He was from Croatia and this was his sea. He has always been fascinated by color and the extraordinary beauty of his homeland. Most important, art is about feeling, he told me, and feeling is everything. I had spent the majority of my life up to this point toiling in the sciences, and my exposure to art was rather limited. But I was drawn to this painting and I was going to buy it, here, on the street. The subway ride home jerked and jolted, and I cradled my possession carefully.

I spent the next several years wading through an epicenter of creative expression, senses overwhelmed and options infinite. I wandered inside massive museums, claustrophobic spaces, and everything in between attempting to experience every genre of art—architecture, contemporary painting, Indie rock, film, modern dance, photojournalism, and Broadway shows. Art became omnipresent—a barrage of stimuli that simultaneously energized and exhausted me.

In Maine, I find myself even more connected to the world of art. Here, art is around every corner, incredibly personal, and free from obstacle. Above all, Maine artists, collectors, and craftspeople have a passion unlike any other. They bring to life those inexplicable qualities of the Maine they love, the Maine I love.

A few weeks ago, while unpacking, I uncovered the painting. The naivety and excitement of that moment came back all at once. As I decided on the perfect spot to display it, I reflected on what draws people to a piece of art, and beyond art, what draws people to anything they love. What is it that reels us in, that disarms us in moments we least expect? What attracted me to this work that night? Was it the color, or was it something less tangible than that—a gut feeling perhaps, like the painter said? Or maybe a knowing and understanding, as if I’ve had a glimpse, albeit brief, into the artist’s soul? Maybe we experience the deepest connection to art when we know the story behind it.

tSomeone recently asked me what I write about and, as I explained, it hit me: maybe we are most connected to homes when we know the stories behind them. It is never just about design in exclusion of the personal; it is about getting at the heart of what makes something someone’s. I suddenly realized with my answer I was defending my own artistic endeavor—to make what is written felt—like that painter who sought to capture the feeling of his ocean on a canvas.

Diver Adrift by Mali Cizmic hangs in the essayist’s living room, a lasting reminder of her first art purchase.