Article January 17, 2011 Issue

God’s beautiful canvas

By Mark Swinney

From Los Angeles to Amsterdam and beyond, museums display beautiful works of art by impressionist artists, who have explored on canvas the effects of light and movement on the appearance of people and objects. Impressionist artists painted what they thought and felt, more than what they saw. 

Anytime you visit a museum and take some time to examine a piece of art that you particularly like, have you ever noticed what especially draws you into the painting? Your main focus probably isn’t the atomic components of the paints the artist happened to use. When you look carefully at a painting, you’re really looking at the composition of an artist’s thought; you’re sharing an artist’s particular perspective and point of view.

I’ve found that there are some parallels to looking at paintings in this way and understanding other kinds of artwork. In one sense, the world around us is a kind of canvas, and it’s natural to hunger to know much more about the nature of the artist who created it. 