I Bought A Painting

What I Needed

What I needed/wanted was to get rid of that dead painting behind the couch I got from art.com that was becoming a burden to look at.

Last year, we did a complete upgrade to our living room, changing out furniture, rugs, drapes, everything. It was amazing and changed the whole vibe of the room. And that painting no longer worked.

But I didn’t want just any painting. I wanted one that felt alive. I wanted a painting that would portal me into a different head space whenever I looked at it. 

Too much to ask?

I wanted a relationship with an artist

I also wanted to make a human connection. To look into the artist’s eyes, shake her hand.

I wanted to hear the painting’s origin story. How it came to be. I wanted to know about her process, how she likes to work, what sparks her ideas, do they come from the medium or nature or somewhere else?

Does she listen to music when she works? Does she have any rituals?

I also wanted to be part of that artist’s tribe. By exchanging money for art, I would become a supporter—a person who wants that person to keep making things and exploring new mediums and worlds.

I knew where to look. 

Zee’s house

I remember Barbara Mink’s Sunflower painting in Zee’s writing room—those sad, droopy sunflowers, so stoically watching over us as we scribbled into our notebooks every week at Emma’s.

 

I remember this one, also. 

I think it’s a dogwood flower. I forget where this one was in the old house. But yes. Another Mink.

Zee’s walls started to fill with abstractions.

As the years passed, Zee’s walls started to fill with Mink’s abstractions—bright, happy canvases with big splashes of color.

I really loved these!  Zee was apparently collecting paintings of an artist she knew personally and loved. If I asked about a painting, she would tell me what she liked about it. She said if I liked Barbara’s work, there was more to see at Mink’s Gallery, and she would gladly make the introduction. She also advised me to look at Barbara’s website to check out her whole catalog. https://barbaramink.com/

So I did. 

When I look at paintings

When I look at paintings, I either resonate with them, or I don’t. I have an emotional reaction, or I don’t. Something intuitive awakens in me, or it doesn’t. 

 Intuition is subconscious pattern recognition. When you get that feeling of “I’ve been here before”, or “This has happened before,” that’s a remembering of something you once saw or dreamt, coming back to you.

When I look at art and am delighted, or feel personally addressed in some way, that intuitive fizzling in my brain, that cognitive moment of recognition, makes me curious, and want to savor, study, and explore more of whatever generated it.

Only abstract art gives me that kind of pranic frisson. Rothko and Jackson Pollack take my breath away. I feel punched in the gut in the presence of some of those paintings.

Studying the website

The Mink Gallery website is beautiful. There were so many paintings I loved. The paintings are photographed alone, and in room settings. I studied them for days.

Naturally, I loved the big ones I had no space for.

I have the kind of house storybook rabbits live in. Very small, with low ceilings and little open wall space. The wall over the couch is my biggest expanse. 

After many days of studying and measuring, I came up with five strong contenders from her catalog— paintings I loved for very different reasons.

I decided to let G pick, and she chose Vein of Gold. I arranged an appointment to see it. 

Vein of Gold

I arranged to see Vein of Gold on Thursday, October 26^th at 1 at the Mink Gallery in Ithaca, NY. Barbara Mink had been in New York City the previous day teaching and had arrived home late. I worried she would be tired from her trip and not be in the mood to talk. 

I was wrong.

Street view of Mink’s house

I got to her house around 12:30, which was too early, and circled around the neighborhood a bit, trying to get the lay of the land and figure out parking. As it turned out, she said I could park in her driveway, which I did.

She met me at the Gallery door

The Mink Gallery

She looked very nice. very pulled together. She wore a stylish close-fitted leather jacket, and nice pants. I don’t look at shoes, but boots, maybe? Professional. Yes. That’s how she looked. Very professional.

Barbara Mink standing in front of Vein of Gold

Turns out she’s not a trained painter. she studied Comparative Literature. 

She grew up in Buffalo. She teaches at the Cornell School of Business. 

Her father was a painter. “But a very bad teacher,” she added.

Then, one day in 1999, she woke up and needed to paint. It was like an epiphany, she said. 

What we talk about when we talk about art

She’s an early riser. She works in the morning. 

We have daughters about the same age.

She loves working with alcohol inks now. Loves the colors.

We pinballed from topic to topic.

Eventually, Zee and Blue joined us, and the conversation continued

I stared at Vein of Gold. 

It was so much more beautiful in person. But I knew it would take me a long time to know it. 

I said, “I need to go home, hang it, then sip a glass of wine and look at it.”

She said, “You like dry reds?” 

“I do indeed,” I said.

“Wait right here,” she said and went over to her house and came back with this:

She did the label.

How cool.

Ettore Sottsass’s definition of a toast

I didn’t think about it then, but our interaction reminded me of a quote by the Italian architect Ettore Sottsass. 

He once described a toast as a moment of awareness between the wine, a glass, and a person.

That’s how I felt about buying this painting. It felt like a moment of awareness between a painting, the artist, and the person/buyer. 

She created the painting. 

I resonated with it.

And now it hangs where I can feel that resonance every time I look at it. I now also have a connection with an artist, and a story about the day I bought it.

This dreamy, soft-focused landscape resonates far beyond any concept of land.

I feel I’ll be able to look at it for a long time without exhausting its complexity.

I got everything I wanted from this meeting. And more.

Here is Vein of Gold at home.