Gallery-tinted Glasses

I may be retired but, for better or worse, I'm not immune to routine. In order to keep my promise of seeing more art, after retiring I allocated Friday as Gallery Day. In three years I've missed many, but kept more. So, I seem to have fallen into frequenting the National Gallery habitually. Admittedly, I tend to stick with the permanent displays - I still marvel that such a range of artworks is available for us to spend as long as we like with and at no cost.

It's getting such that I nod acknowledgement to some of the works, particularly in the Australian collection to which I seem to gravitate. There they all are, reliably marking periods in history, moods and opinions. On any given day I usually linger around one work or body of works: sometimes getting lost in classic portraits in heavy gilt frames, and other days in dot renderings of Dreamtime stories.

Wherever I go inside the gallery changes the world outside. The gallery has the unique ability to de-clutter the mind and realign it. After leaving, the skyline might look fragile and pastel coloured or muted and monochromatic. The streams of commuters filing in and out of Flinders Street Station take on a brown-ish hue, like the salary-folk of Brack's Collins St., 5pm. And they make a certain retiree grateful for his self-imposed routines, rather than the nine-to-five automated-walkway he stepped off a few years ago.

By guest: Kevin Frith