Art Opening: August 20th, 6-8PM
August 20th-October 12th
A warm blanket. Or a warm puppy. Depending on your viewpoint, happiness can be many things as the Ray Coniff Singers sang in the 1960s that it’s “different things for different people.” Charles Schultz’s lovable Peanuts characters sang in You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, that it can be as simple as, “two kinds of ice cream, finding your skate key,” or “catching a fire fly [and] setting him free.”
Cora Smith’s upcoming exhibit of at The Artists Hand reveals happiness through portraits of children engaged in simple acts. Simple moments of joy. Through her vision we get to look at authentic pleasures that are sometimes forgotten. Suddenly skipping down the sidewalk. Reading a magazine in a warm sunbeam. Finding the courage to take a plunge into a pool. These are large works. Bold colors warmly filling canvases with a certain radiance of an authentic spirit. The stuff we did when we didn’t have anything in particular to do. Except be.
There’s more to these paintings, though, that isn’t immediately apparent. The fact that they are paintings created by an artist brings us to it. They are meant to be shared. Artists need you, their audience. We need each other at events like our opening reception for Smith’s exhibit. As reported in the Harvard Gazette, the longest running study of adult development seems to assure us that finding joy in community is more of a determinant than genes for a long life. Relationships matter.
In this more recent musical exploration of happiness, Taylor Swift meditates on the grief of moving on from a broken, abusive relationship, to find the new me now. Perhaps our childhood taught us. That it’s as simple, and as difficult, as catching a firefly and setting him free.
-Brian Jones, Gallery Owner
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