Easter Art, Todd Anderson and Nature

Art is everywhere: In museums and galleries, on the wall of your home or dentist’s office. I enjoy visiting museums and cherish my 90 seconds of interrupted viewing of the great masters before I have to make way for the next museum visitor. I am equally intrigued by the Rembrandt’s in the Mauritshuis as I am the Mondriaan’s in the Gemeente Museum. But I am particularly attracted to Landscape paintings. They draw me in to the idea of nature, quite often from a bird’s-eye or mountain- top view.

Perhaps this favoritism has to do with growing up close to nature. But if you think about it, nature is the original artist (or God, if you are so inclined).

Unlike a crowded museum, nature gives you the time and space to breathe in the art of a landscape, the patterns in a waterfall or leaf, the play of light and shadow mixed with wind, sunshine or an overcast sky. Add in the senses of smell, hearing and touch, and you are in the world’s most intense gallery.

This morning I saw art where no one else did; in the discarded shells of a colored easter egg. It conjured up memories of Fiesta in Santa Barbara and the confetti-filled eggs for sale at every corner; childhood memories of sitting through a Catholic mass with the anticipation of the Easter Bunny visiting our garden; a Martha Stewart color scheme for an Easter dinner.

Perhaps someone could read my fortune into this particular spread of egg shells: Although you frequently misplace your keys, you are a keen observer; you see art and joy where others see only discarded things. Your Lucky number is 173.

Had it been any other time of year, the discarded egg shells would have offered up a monochrome pallette of white or brown, and I wouldn’t have given them a second thought. Easter transformed the ordinary.