Davina Sims

Sitting in a lecture hall listening to a professor talk about the Renaissance period while the world was still going on outside of campus, put a slight cramp in my thirst for knowledge in the arts.

Although I’ve had an interest in art since I was a child, I never really took the time to really delve into it. My knowledge primarily consisted of identifying the continental origin of a particular piece of art. African and Asian art were easy to identify as well as Roman art.

This journey of trying to rediscover myself has led me on this path again. I gave up so much of who I was in hopes of fitting in where I thought I was supposed to. There weren’t many people in my community who loved art and wanted to go to the museum instead of hanging out, so I bottled a lot of my personal interest. This behavior went on well into my adult life. Now that I’m more of an independent thinker, I march more to my own beat and if the rhythm catches like-minded individuals, then they’re welcome to join the tribe.

To help me get started, I purchased this new art book off Amazon titled The Definitive Visual History of Art. It explores prehistoric art to the 21st century. It has over 1900 pages of pictural images of the world’s greatest art pieces. With my primary focus being on the 15th and 16th century, I hope to learn about the different techniques utilized in order to create such skillful pieces. I’m thoroughly amazed at the skill set that it takes to create an oil painting like Raphael, The School of Athens. I also want to learn how to properly interpret/evaluate art. At this point I’m basically impressed by anything that I can’t do.

I will continue to post as I learn and discover more. I may even share some of my own paintings along the way.

Thanks for reading.

Davina S.