My Sanctuary

Since the first time I walked into an Art Museum, the feeling has not changed:

absolutely and sheer peace. When I was a little kid I used to have a very peculiar liking for my age: museums.And throughout my adolescence I remember that I always took the chance to go from time to time to the part I liked the most of my city: downtown, what we call "El Casco viejo" in Santa Cruz. A place where the main Municipal Museum was built.I used to go there to find shelter, it was like “a calling” in moments of hardships or turmoil. And that was how it became into my sanctuary, where the time I was investing was solely for me.A few years ago, with more than 2 decades of existence I found my self living a completely different life from the former, far away from my home country. And “the calling” still came, so I decided to wander through the streets of Tokyo until I found the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno district.I devoted that day 3 full hours looking over the whole place without a rush. I stopped to observe in detail every sculpture, every canvas separately.And I saw there, with an amateur eye and without too much knowledge of Art, nor even the biography of those painters their life depicted in masterpieces.An interesting thing happened: I saw my own life reflected in every piece of them.It was like if my soul could comprehend beyond the limits of my mind, the motives and the emotional situation in the moment that the paint and art were created. I guess that if anyone spent 3 hours in a place like this could feel it too.Anyway, in a personal opinion I think that paintings reflect more emotions and spiritual states than any other expression media. At least it fits my own way of being. I do not use to show my paintings to anyone, even less in any circumstance. And I use to give my humble creations rarely; but when I do it I’m sharing my inner world with the person that receives it.So going back to that day in Tokyo, I saw myself depicted in many of those paintings. My own emotional state jumped from the contemplation of “Miro” and “Picasso”, through the tranquillity in “Renoir” and “Van Gogh”, until the exhilaration of “Signag” and “Pollack”.I saw my own times of deep meditation in “The Thinker” of “Rodin” until my moments of major tribulation in “Max Ernst”.And suddenly, I felt understood and consoled, once I noticed that the very creators of those pieces were humans as me. And that just like me, they lived and expressed the same “spiritual states”, or “emotional moments” that we all had experienced in any given time.So that day, after getting out from my personal sanctuary, I felt more human, ordinary and connected with the world.Another “opening moment” I received from this country I was so afraid of in the beginning…