Per creare un mondo unico, bisogna essere esposti alla grande arte.

To create a unique world, one must be exposed to great art.

– Fernando Botero

What art galleries mean to me…

Let’s be real, we all love art. Or at the very least, we can all appreciate it. Art plays an important role in our daily lives. We see it in our carefully-curated Pinterest boards. It is in the foam on our cappuccino. It shows up in the way we plate up our dinner.

My appreciation for art began when I was a child. I’ve always loved painting and drawing, but gallery and museum-hopping is something I started doing fairly recently. During my master’s, it became my favourite part-time hobby. A somewhat exclusive hobby, though, because it’s not every day that one gets to explore a museum or gallery. Nevertheless, galleries were (and continue to be) a sort of haven for me. A chance to escape reality and step into a thousand different worlds.

The beauty of passive observation…

I could spend hours walking round a gallery.

I remember the day vividly… Saturday, Mid-April, 2023. Location(s): Padua -> Venice. The weather was perfect. That perfect balance between warm and breezy. The plan was, spend the day in Padua and see where the day takes me. I finish my cappuccino and head in the direction that feels most right. Forward. Ten minutes go by and I stumble across a courtyard doused in sunlight. I ask the man in my broken Italian:

‘Che cos’è questo?’ (What is this?)

He replies:

‘Una mostra gratis con solo artiste donne.’ (A free exhibition with only female artists.)

The day could not have started any better. I wandered the open-air exhibition for what felt like hours. Taking in the incredible artwork by these women. I thought about taking out my translator and reading the accompanying information on the artwork. I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad that all I could do was observe. Observe and interpret, for myself, what was in front of me. I know that all of those women had a story to tell, and I hope people listened. What that experience taught me, though, is that it’s not always a bad thing to have an incomplete picture. That experience, and pretty much all my experiences abroad, introduced me to the beauty of passive observation.

The beauty of seeing others seeing art…

On that glorious April day, I hadn’t planned to go to Venice. And that’s exactly why I went. How many of us can say, ‘I decided to catch a train to Venice at the last minute?’ How many get to choose Venice instead of going straight home?

Ca’ Pesaro International Gallery of Modern Art. My favourite gallery to date. I visited Ca’ Pesaro three times during my au pair months. And each time, I saw something different. Sure, the art was always the same, always spectacular. But the people? Always different. Loved-up couples. Groups of restless school kids. Old men and their walking sticks. So many different walks of life in one space. Some of them were there for the same reason I was, to escape reality for a while. Others, out of obligation or boredom. Others, because Tripadvisor told them they MUST see this and they MUST see that. Art galleries exist to give people the opportunity to see things. Now whenever I visit a new gallery, I remind myself to observe the observer, as well as the art. There’s a quiet magic in seeing people seeing art. You get to see how it stirs them, how it doesn’t. It’s a reminder that, in some form or other, we are all trying to feel, something.

The beauty of art and introversion…

In psychological terms, introversion is a tendency towards one’s own thoughts or feelings. The mind of an introvert is like an endless garden. A landscape simultaneously nurtured and traversed. Art tends to the mind in ways that other things do not. It is one of the most vital catalysts for deep thought.

I returned home from Venice having only spoken to the man at the exhibition. That thought would have baffled me once… The idea of staying solely in my own head for the day. But that’s what I love about art. That’s what I love about going to an art gallery. It forces you, one way or another, to think. It forces you to be with your mind. To wander its quiet paths; the ones you try to avoid. And yes, the mind can be a scary place sometimes, messy and restless. But given enough time and stillness, it can also become a sanctuary. A place where ideas can breathe, and where silence can feel like company. Art is the agent. The foundation upon which we can learn to accept what’s going on, up there.