Discover The Art You Love

Millie checking out Donald Judd's aluminum boxes in Marfa...

I have this memory, from when I was about Millie's age, of sitting on the porch of an old grocery store turned home in Louisiana with my parents and their friends the artists Dickie Landry and Tina Girouard. We were there hanging out for the day, and bored with grown-up chatter, I started making mischief. Poking around inside (there were countless treasures inside), I found a rubber stamp and some ink. I made my way back out to the porch where I sidled up to Tina and used the stamp and ink to create an elaborate pattern on the full length of her leg.

She didn't flinch. Just keep chatting and sipping her drink. Then, after about 15 minutes, she looked down at my "creation", looked up at me, and said simply, "that's art."

I'm fairly certain it wasn't anywhere near art. Rather, it was a bored five-year-old kid being naughty (I know this for a fact actually, as said kid was me), but her statement changed me nonetheless. It instilled in me this idea that art was approachable, that it wasn't this elusive, far off, intimidating thing. It was (not to be cliche) all around us.

A collection of art books at Oil and Cotton...

I've tried to cement this idea in my own girls by infusing their lives with as many artful moments as possible. We go to museums and galleries, make art pilgrimages to far off cities, read books about artists, talk about art, and create our own art as much as possible. Through this process I want them to suss out what they like and why they like it, and I want them to feel comfortable, natural having a conversation about it. I want them to feel as at ease with art as they do with food. To view it as necessary and nourishing, an essential, unquestionable part of their day-to-day lives.

Art still intimidates me, I'm not going to lie, but over the years, through this nonstop looking, I've figured out what I love. What turns me inside out when I lay eyes on it. What I want to look at over and over...

Image of the Mine gallery in Dallas via Hilary Inspired.


Recently for art.com's addictive Art Circles app for iPad, I pulled together a gallery of some of these works that, for me, represent the idea of "Slow."

Most elusive, it seems, is the ability to truly unplug. Ever-present technology, while providing flexibility and convenience, leaves little opportunity to dream, to let the imagination run wild. These pieces feel like quiet moments to me. Deliberate scenes and figures that evoke a sense of slow calm.

Pieces like Paul Klee's Fruchte Auf Rot...

And his House on The Water.

Oh and Picasso's Blue Nude too.


These are the some of the works I get lost in.

What works do you love?

*This is my second post in a series about my relationship with art sponsored by art.com.