Yesterday, we went into NYC to see the Cypresses Van Gogh show at the Met. I thought of Starcrossed's heroine, Annette Zelman, as I studied the textures and brush strokes. Most of you don't know that my parents were both find artists, and I was taught to examine paintings from multiple perspectives (much as I like to write!). So I look from the right and then the left, far back (if possible in a crowd) and close up for inspection. I do love the #impressionists. I am known for visiting Les Nymphaes in #Paris and swimming around the room, as if I were swimming at Giverny in Monet's pond.

The collection at the Met has many paintings from private collections and I saw Van Gogh using palettes I have never seen in his work before--more muted, earth tones, very different. And I swear I could feel the breeze in some of them. There was one that I had never seen before - violet storm clouds and the vertical strokes across the fields--away from the painter's perspective--felt like a wind was at his back, pushing the clouds away.

Annette would have loved the exhibit. It wasn't surrealism, which was her favorite genre, but she was always looking for ways to see and experience life through art. I imagined how she and Jean would have discussed the art as they walked hand and hand through the galleries and needled through the crowds. I thought, as I stood before a less popular painting, that this is where they would have stood - unmoving. Hand in hand. Silently communicating. Eating up the color palette, divining the strokes, and then would have slipped to their chambre de bonne to make love under their own collection of art, hanging above their unmade bed.

I have posted images on Instagram: H D Macadam
https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions...