national gallery of victoria

april 4th 2007, my day at the National Gallery of Victoria, in melbourne australia of course. i so enjoyed my trip to the art gallery. i had the same feeling that a kid in a toy shop had. everything i saw was like, "wow". the national gallery had 2 main buildings (separated by a street!). one is the Ian Potter gallery, which has 3 floors and houses mainly beautiful aboriginal art, photo exhibits, as well as special exhibits like fashion and designs, and when i was there, a renaissance art exhibit. the other bigger gallery is the national gallery, which is also a 3 storey complex of all sorts of art exhibits, ranging from the 13th century right up to 20th century art, modern art and abstract art. they also had a special kids exhibit where kids can participate in different arts and craft. just a wonderful effort to inspire and encourage our young. sigh, where were these efforts when we were young?...

my favorites has to be the stuff from the 13th and 14th century, which were mostly not paintings on canvases but rather art on mediums like wood and stone. and most of them were christian expressions in art form, i.e. they were parts of doors or windows or altar pieces from ancient churches or places of worship just salvaged, restored and put on exhibit for us to feast our eyes upon and marvel at. and i absolutely loved and am amazed at how marvelouslly restored they were. the colors were very deep and vibrant and solid. the condition of the colors looked almost brand new but coupled with very ancient style of drawing and imaging on very raw and natural medium. i loved it! unfortunately i don't have any photos of it because believe it or not i didn't know how to do non-flash photography yet on our camera which i was using on my own for the first time. i tried stealing a shot of the gallery, with flash, and was immediately

told off by one of the stewards. it was embarrasing but i just played the ignorant fool, haha.

i have not decided who my favorite artists are yet as i'm just learning about all the famous ones now like van gogh, picasso, matisse, renoir, michelangelo, raphael, rembrandt, monet, cezanne, dega, and da vinci now. but so far my favorite is probably leonardo da vinci's work. and since then i've been very inspired to paint and have been gathering ideas on how and what i can paint. have started painting but am not any good in it so i've decided to just paint for my own pleasure. perhaps one day i might have the guts to put up one of my swirls up here.