At long last, I finally got to see the Georgia O’Keeffe exhibit at the Vancouver Art Gallery. I emailed Linda to ask if she wanted to go and she met me at the Broadway Skytrain station and we took it to Granville. She had purchased a membership to the Gallery and had a free pass to get in, so I didn’t even have to pay for admission – bonus!
We walked in and a short tour of the O’Keeffe exhibit had just started, so we joined the group and listened to the guide talk about a few of the paintings in the different rooms. Then, we walked through and looked at the other paintings in the room where the tour ended and the adjoining rooms which had a bunch of photographs of Georgia taken by Todd Webb, who became a good friend of hers after her husband died.
There was a room where they had set up some cow skulls similar to those O’Keeffe was so famous for painting and they had little pieces of paper and pencils and some benches to sit on and sketch your own little drawing. I thought it’d be fun to do, so we sat down for a few minutes to each sketch the main longhorn skull they had hanging on the wall. Linda’s was pretty good and mine wasn’t terrible, given that I don’t draw much and have no instruction in drawing at all. Sometimes, I wonder if I would be a decent sketcher if, A) I practiced and B) if I took some classes to learn techniques. I used to draw when I was younger, but I’d never say I was ever really any good at it. I have always had a hard time being able to look at an object and see the shadows and stuff that give it depth and dimension. Perhaps that’s something that could be learned? I’ve always thought that if I were better at drawing that my design work would improve exponentially, but perhaps the two are not as tied together as I think they are. Linda and I finished our sketches, signing them Carly O’Keeffe and Linda O’Keeffe – hahaha 🙂
We went through the little store they had set up to sell prints and books and gift items of O’Keeffe’s work. They had several books there and stuff that interested me, but I figured I could just pick up something on Amazon once I figure out which one I’d like to have. They had a book of the pieces that were in the exhibit and I thought about getting that, but it was $40, so I was hesitant. Maybe I’ll head back down there and pick it up before the exhibit is over, just to have a memento from having been.
Then, we went back through the whole exhibit and took our time in examining each piece. The one they used for the exhibit promo, called Series 1, No. 4, was absolutely breathtaking. The colours were so rich and vibrant and I could barely drag myself away from it. They had prints of it in the little shop there, but the colours were so drab compared to how saturated and vivid the actual painting was that it seemed pointless to buy a reproduction that came nowhere near the feeling of the original. There were a few other pieces that I really liked as well, but that one piece was by far the most impressive to me of the collection they had.
During our proper walk through, we stopped to watch a little 15-minute documentary, narrated by Gene Hackman, that was playing continuously in an adjoining room. There was a longer film, 47 minutes long, that was playing in another room at the other end of the exhibit, but we didn’t stop to watch that one because it was getting late and we wanted to be sure to have time to view the exhibit without feeling rushed.
It’s hard to put into words how it feels to be standing mere inches from actual paintings of an artist that you’ve liked for a really long time, particularly an internationally-renowned artist like Georgia O’Keeffe. Ever since Johnathan and James had some of her prints framed in their apartment, I always liked her work. It’s weird that I haven’t really sought to learn more about her or see more of her work over the years until now, but having seen some short clips of her on YouTube and, now having seen the exhibit, it makes me sad that I didn’t have a chance to meet her in real life. She lived til she was 98 and I think the fact that she was old and still had such a lively spirit and such a great attitude and vision of the world around her, coupled with the fact that I’ve always gotten along with older people, makes me feel like she is someone I would have had an instant connection with. Her zest for life – she took a 7-day rafting trip with a group of friends when she was 73! – is something I really admire and aspire to experience more of in my life. There was one quote that she said that made me chuckle – it was in regards to the flat-topped mountain – Pedernal – that was near her home in New Mexico. She said “It’s my private mountain. God told me if I painted it often enough, I could have it.”
When we first got into the exhibit, I was so in awe of seeing her actual work that it nearly brought me to tears. I just felt so privileged and inspired and so fortunate to be there and to witness those things with my own eyes. I was telling Linda that I just wish I could explain to anyone how it makes me feel to see colours like that. It’s really indescribable and very emotional in a way that, sadly, I’m sure most people don’t get to experience something like that.
We took the Skytrain back to Tracey’s to pick up my car and I dropped Linda at her house before coming back home. I was really glad to have gone with Linda because I think she has a similar appreciation for the experience and the colours – more so than the average person, for sure. I told Tracey about it and she said she’d still like to go and I’m sure it would be a more pleasant experience to see it with her when I have already seen it and taken my time to really look at each piece, so whatever impatience she may have would not bother me so much.
All in all, I am just really happy that I actually managed to get to the exhibit and had the experience with someone whose company I enjoyed.