Discouragement
Wasted another weekend sleeping. I decided to take a little nap today at 6, and didn't wake up until past 9. That together with the fact that I slept till 3 yesterday doesn't sound good. For the record though, I went to sleep at 4 both Friday and Saturday nights. I'd love to sleep earlier and wake up earlier, but it is so hard to justify "wasting time" sleeping when 2am rolls around and I am not tired. On the other hand, it is so easy to justify wasting time sleeping when 9am rolls around.
Today I made a point to wake up early so I could get over to Ueno to visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, which I have been wanting to do for some time now. The problem of course is that the museum has crazy hours. They close at 5 pm. This is fine if you live next door, but what about regular people like me who live over an hour away? By the time I get up at noon, get ready and get over there, I would only have 3 hours before it closes. At 1,300 yen for a ticket, that's not much time.
Anyway I woke up early this morning and made it out there by noon. I feel like a fool for worrying about not having enough time to spend there. In fact, there is no real set exhibition at the museum. It is a bunch of rooms that get rented out by other groups for their arts and craft shows. There actually is one rotating exhibition, but from the brochure I couldn't imagine that it would be worth paying 1,300 yen to see furniture.
Anyway, the extent of the art I saw today was Tokyo grade schoolers', Tokyo grade school teachers', and one fine arts high school graduation exhibit. The good thing about this is that it gave me a lot more confidence to show my own painting in a few weeks, seeing as how much of what I saw today looks like at about the same level as mine (I'm not talking about the kids' stuff). In fact, I noticed that when a not so good painting is surrounded by better paintings, and in the context of an exhibition, it looks much better.
One discouraging thing was that some of the kids' stuff kicks mine works butt! Our technique is pretty much on the same level, but their "artistic vision" seems to be light years ahead of mine. I probably should have their names to give credit for these. If you click on the "Huge" ling for each picture, you should be able to see the name next to the paintings.
