There was a time in which I was a little girl, frozen still, on the floor, gazing into a book at a painting by Balthus. I was gazing at another pensive little girl, who was gazing back at me, perhaps lost in dreams of adulthood herself. I wished someday that I could paint her, too.

I’ve gone through periods of life where I almost became “tired” of art. Weary of it. A bit nauseated thinking of it in the way that I’d grown accustomed through years of schooling. Already, as a teenager, I was beginning to see myself as a “professional artist.” I was selling my work, seeing my paintings in drawings on walls in public spaces. I felt like a success or a failure by turns. In later years, it become difficult not to ruminate about political controversies in the industry, social awkwardness of dealing with clients or institutions, or other practical concerns that have nothing to do with art, but had somehow eclipsed the original joy of making—of looking at pictures.

I used to sit in my room on the floor as a kid with a big coffee table book of painting on my lap and just look, and look, and look. I could barely understand the language of the captions so that didn’t impact my thinking too much. I saw names and dates, a few words here an there I recognized, but I knew so little of history and the world that it told me almost nothing. All I had were my eyes and my mind—an open, flexible, responsive mind. I would follow the lines and shapes and colors and forms and simply wonder in them.

I knew the paintings meant something. The full story I tried to guess, but being a little girl I couldn’t quite make it out. Yet there was the delectability of a limb, the blueness of a cast shadow in sunlight, the gaze of a silent face, distorted by the ineffable choices of the painter, moves that some how took away everyday reality, and turned mundane details into poetry. It was a silent poetry I was listening to, with my juvenile eyes and mind.

I’m only just beginning to come back to that original pleasure of looking. Finally, in mid life, after such a long hiatus from anything resembling professional work, I am losing my weariness and my wariness of art. The word itself is beginning to signify something hopeful again. I know art is something good—one of the great goods of life. I am now becoming more and more free to enjoy again, without having to wonder how I measure up, or how I can monetize it, or how this will impact my career. Taking artworks as gifts, and not just instruction manuals in technique, or goads for my own ambitions, but simply as wonders to be enjoyed for themselves, is a quiet renaissance for me. I am grateful for it.