A New Perspective
For the first couple weeks of being in Winona I felt uncomfortable, at times out of place. It was this same feeling I had when walking into the Minnesota Marine Art Museum in Winona, Minnesota. As I walked in, paintings seemed to be strung up everywhere in a chaotic manner. However, looking closer I saw the beauty in each individual piece as my gaze flew through harbors, winter scenes, and continued down the hall to land on William Mason Brown’s “Wilderness Pool.” When my gaze hit Brown’s painting, I was drawn in by the vibrant colors attached to trees in the fall landscape depicted. These colors coupled with a familiar landscape of rolling hills created a sense of both thrill and of comfort in me as my eyes rested on the painting. This is similar to the sense of thrill and comfort I have experienced while living in Winona.
William Mason Brown was among an elite group of artists. William Mason Brown was known for painting landscapes and portraits. He was born in New York in 1828 and was inspired by artists of the Hudson River School. Hudson River School artists viewed the landscape as a meaningful subject. They embraced that there was meaning in depicting realism in natural landscapes and wanted to give the viewer an experience through their pieces. Thomas Cole was the founder of the Hudson River School and was one of the great influences on William Mason Brown’s works.
I experienced a change in perspective when I looked at William Mason Brown’s “Wilderness Pool,” which is an 1865 painting, in which a stream gently trickles down rolling hills in the fall. At first glance the colors of the trees seemed to be mashed together. But the longer I continued to look at the painting, my perspective began to shift. It seemed as though I was in the shoes of Brown looking at the hills of horizon ahead of him, hills which are very similar to the bluffs around Winona. The longer I looked at the painting, the more comfortable I felt with it.
With my eyes fixed on the red and orange fall leaves of Brown’s “Wilderness Pool,” I was reminded of the time I walked down the trail alongside lake Winona shortly after starting class at Winona State University. As the orange leaves softly crunched under my feet, every step brought comfort that day. The lust of beginning college was being carried out of my mind like the breath rolling out of my lungs. This was the first day that I was able to exhale and take in a new sense of being home. I grew up flying safely under my parent’s wings. Everywhere I went was coupled with a text to my mom of where exactly I was going. But in college my phone stays in my pocket as I am now accountable for myself. I carry the weight and consequences of every step that I take and decision I make. In adjusting to life in Winona I was met with a sense of both thrill and comfort, and Brown’s “Wilderness Pool” gave this same sense to me through a multitude of colored pigments on a canvas.
Standing in the Minnesota Marine Art Museum I began to wonder if William Mason Brown was ever like me. I wondered if there was ever a time where the reality he captured with oil on a canvas changed. As our experience with an area broadens, our perspective often shifts. I wonder if Brown’s “Wilderness Pool” ever became an “outdoor home” or, as he worked on his piece, a “view from a desk.” I wonder if the vibrant colors he painted could have ever dulled in his mind as “Wilderness Pool” became just another one of his paintings. I wonder if the trickling stream in the center of his painting was his focal point when he started, but just background noise when he finished his work. The stream at the center of Brown’s “Wilderness Pool” rushes over rocks and through the hills of his painting. However, the grandeur of this little river seems to be overtaken by the trees exhibiting their colors all around it. This is similar to how the longer I live in Winona, the more the beauty of the bluffs and river get dulled by the business of everyday life.
Anyone who has been to Winona knows that the town is surrounded by water. And if you look down on the town from Garvin Heights you may think for a second that Winona is an island city. Specifically, the majestic Mississippi River flows right along the edge of town separating us from our neighboring state. When I first visited Winona, I was attracted to the splendor of the Mississippi. I walked through Levee Park down to the river’s edge and sat watching the water pass by, silently making its way toward the Gulf of Mexico. Between the strength of the current and the size of the river, in hosting large river barges, the river was mystifying to me. However, the longer I have lived in Winona the less the river has become to me. Instead of being a focal point of my attention, like the stream at the center of “Wilderness Pool,” the river is just there. And like how in “Wilderness Pool” the colors drown out the magnificence of the creek to me; in Winona, time has demystified my view of the Mississippi River.
I previously mentioned the rolling hills of William Mason Brown’s “Wilderness Pool” giving me a sense of comfort and feeling of being at home in looking at the painting by reminding me of the bluffs around Winona. However, I was not always at home with a bluff horizon. I grew up in flat Faribault, Minnesota, where corn fields filled the landscape surrounding my home. And similar to the river, the bluffs once amazed me in their sheer beauty. My first time driving down Highway 61 into Winona, my eyes were filled with awe at the image of the bluffs. But as I have lived in Winona longer, the beauty of the bluffs hasn’t changed but their significance to me has. The bluffs have changed from being the main attention of my gaze all the time, to a comforting background to the setting of the city. As Winona has changed from my place of residence to my home, the landscape of the bluffs has become within my idea of home. Thus, when my eyes came to the rolling hills of “Wilderness Pool” they were prepared to find a sense of the comfort within the image.
Life is full of twists and turns, and every day holds the potential to change the way we view ourselves or even life in general. Had I stepped into the Minnesota Marine Art Museum the first day I came to Winona William Mason Brown’s “Wilderness Pool” painting wouldn’t have impacted me the same way it did. My experience in Winona allowed the art to speak to me in a way that wouldn’t have been possible without it. It was almost as though I had been prepared to view the piece with its rolling hills hosting a cascading creek through my experiences in life. Through William Mason Brown’s painted depiction of his world I was able to reflect on my own.
I was never a fan of paintings or other visual arts until the day that I visited the Minnesota Marine Art Museum and experienced William Mason Brown’s “Wilderness Pool.” I did not simply look at Brown’s painting, I experienced it. I experienced being in the painting, as though I was looking through the eyes of William Mason Brown at the landscape in front of him. I experienced memories and aspects of my own life hidden within the paint strokes and buried between the colors. With my experience came a new perspective of art. I no longer brush off visual art as a pretty picture or just something to be seen. I now question what it says to me, what memories the art can take me to. I walked out of the Minnesota Marine Art Museum with a new experience and new hunger for artwork. And I ask you to one day go there, not to look, but out of a desperation for experiencing art.
