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What Looking At Paintings Means to Me
How art opens a space for dreams, memories and meanings
I no longer remember the number of times I’ve arrived at London’s Marylebone station, only to make my way inexorably through the well-heeled streets of the city, towards Trafalgar Square and the great art gallery that sits there, proud and unshakeable behind its stout columned facade.
Inside, an expansive collection of paintings attempts to tell the story of Western art. London’s National Gallery is where I so often come to return to myself, to relocate a vanishing point inside me where all things important seem to converge.
On entering, a lingering overwhelm I feel towards London — its immensity, its hungry, competitive energy — quickly fades. Nearly all great museums have this effect on me. They seem to free my mind, and in a strange therapeutic way, excite in me fresh and hallowed expectations.
Perhaps it has to do with the thousands of artefacts: the museum reminds me how much of the world I have yet to understand, and in an exhilarating way, offers a sense of restoration in just a few steps.
