Saturday, May 06, 2017

Rendering tiny Puritans tskless

With grading done and Commencement commencing tomorrow afternoon, I'll spend today doing household tasks and packing for my trip to Florida, which commences early Monday morning. But throughout the day I'll glance with pleasure at this marvelous painting of birds that now brightens up my living room.

The artist is Beth Nash, a colleague of mine whose work I've coveted for years. I can't begin to afford her oil paintings but she had a pretty good price on some acrylic pieces at the Brick Street Arts Bash two weeks ago and I could not resist. The tiny Puritans who live inside my head tsk tsk and tell me it's frivolous to spend money on something that does nothing but bring me pleasure, but if I amortize the price over the number of smiles this painting is destined to provide, it comes out to just pennies per day.

And if that won't make the tiny Puritans shut up, I'll force them to look at the painting. Before long they'll be too busy smiling to issue any tsks.

1 comment:

Contingent Cassandra said...

That's lovely -- and yes, an investment that will amortize nicely over time, in the pleasure it brings.

If I'm remembering correctly, the Westminster Catechism says that the "chief end of man" (and presumably woman) is to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever"). I tend to think that we do just that when we appreciate His works -- and in this case you're appreciating both the beauty of nature and the wonders of human creativity (which are, of course, another part of the creation). So take that, Puritans! (They were, to be fair, reacting against some very real excesses, that were, indeed, perversions of religion. But they took things too far.)