Our son Andrew and I have always enjoyed visiting art museums together, and starting in fifth grade I would call him in “sick” once a year, and we would go out to lunch and visit the Museum of Fine Arts. Though he is grown and married now, we still try to go to a museum once during the holidays. Yesterday we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The courtyard was full of poinsettias. I did the drawing, and then the guard said I couldn’t use watercolor in the museum, so I retreated to the library to add the paint.
It’s really interesting how making a sketch of something makes you pay more attention and improves your memory of a place and an event — a sort of meditation. 