So for the longest time Renoir really pissed me off. Not personally but I was always bothered by the way that his art seems so soft, pastel-ly and (to my mind) not worth the attention that he was getting.  I thought that there were more interesting people out there; Delacroix, Rouault- hell, Bosh was downright cool but Renoir- really?

Some years later it came out that Van Gogh (they now believe) had a psychological or neurological disorder so that he actually saw things the way he painted them. He was painting the world as he knew it. It brought me back to Renoir and it makes me think perhaps he was painting what he saw, what was true for him. I made it a lot harder to be pissed at him and in a way began to let me find the beauty in his work. Perhaps those people who we can’t yet see the beauty in their work are actually seeing the world differently than we do.  They are living in the world that they see and that may be very different then ours. It’s important to have your own world view but then it’s also important to realize that others have theirs too.

Your moment of Zen.