I’ve never understood Halloween. People use it as an excuse to dress strangely. Anything goes. Why just on one day? Why not any other day, if that’s how you want to dress?
Today we went to the Art Center to enter a painting in an upcoming exhibit. Usually, I have very little interest in the art at the shows I’ve attended. It just doesn’t appeal to me, and I don’t consider a splotch of gray paint on a white canvas art.
I was pleasantly surprised at the other paintings being entered. There were several that were quite good. I noticed that a few had a Halloween-type look with skeletons and otherwise dark motifs. I didn’t read the book that this exhibit is based on, but I don’t think it’s that dark.
The woman that arrived just before we did was telling us about her two entries. She sounded quite experienced and wanted to tell us more, but Steve had to get back to work and she was supposed to be downstairs helping with a photography exhibit.
I realized once I got home that it is Halloween, and people do dress up for it. That artist woman, (an apple body shape, mid-50s) had been dressed in black shirt and leggings with an open white lab-coat shirt. The shirt had artful smudges of primary colored paint and artist’s brushes glued in the pockets, and even a watercolor palette pinned on the side. Her hair was pulled back and another small paint brush stuck through it.
What gave away the whole idea that it was a costume, and not what she normally wore to volunteer at the Art Center, were the big ghost earrings she had on.
Well, it doesn’t bother me what people want to wear, as long as it’s not too disgusting. Why do they even make bicycle shorts in size large, anyway? I’ve heard that women are the only ones that notice what people are wearing, unless it’s really drastic. I guess men just see what’s in the clothes, not the clothes themselves. Then they say that “clothes make the man”. I wonder which way it is. I just wear what’s comfortable.
So do people dress up for Halloween as something they’re not? Or something that’s easy? Or something to make a statement? I never figured it out.
By dressing up as an artist for Halloween, is she really saying that it’s the only time she can be an artist? Probably not, but I bet there’s something to be found deep in her subconscious mind.