Dear Reader,
A good idea is a good idea, but I feel particularly good about
this one. My 2020 July-August Judy’s Journal was the first
in a what so far is an 18-blog series, "Stop, Look and
Think.” The latest one is 2024 March. The idea was to set
up ground rules for looking at one of my paintings for a sustained
number of minutes and think about perceptions and feelings.
Step 2 was to then scroll down and read its title and medium.
Did that information affect your original thoughts? Step 3 revealed
the story of how and why the painting was created. I hoped the
Stop, Look and Think series would give readers another way of
looking at art. The idea originated from an activity I had created
for a class about how information influences our perceptions
about art (Judy’s Journal 2017 October GASP!).
Recently, my friend, Francine D’Alessandro, who is another
passionate art lover, alerted me to a New York Times online
series from The Upshot, The 10-Minute Challenge, which (you
guessed it) asked readers to look at an artwork… Imagine
my delight when today’s front page, albeit below the fold,
showed three paintings captioned “Getting an Eyeful, and
Staying With It.” A special section to put up on your wall
is included! “Put down your phone, shut out the world and
really look” (Sunday, June 14, 2026).
I had planned this blog to focus on creating a new series of
artworks and poems inspired by the film “Akira Kurosawa’s
Dreams,” and here I am writing about a blog series. But
when I slid the paper out of its blue plastic bag this morning,
BOOM, there it was! Did my 2020-2024 “Stop, Look and Think”
series come before or after The New York Times “10-Minute
Challenge”? I don’t care. What matters is that there
is more art in the world! What could be better than that?
