Never Settle for Normal

The sky is clear with only a few wisps of cotton candy clouds. I’m walking quickly, almost a run. I have to escape the bantering across the aisle, the hoards of tourists pushing to see the brittle papers declaring our freedoms, the clicks of camera phones and the chance of being impaled with a selfie stick. I take the metro to Dupont Circle toward my refuge as a former collegiate art scholar, the Phillips Collection.

I know where I’m going. I push past groups of indifferent school children snapchatting and confused couples trying to find Renoir’s Boating Party and head for a small gallery on the second floor. In our nation’s capital full of priceless treasures this room is a chapel of serenity and peace, the Rothko Room. I step inside the gallery and the hustle and bustle of the pseudo art connoisseurs around me trying to absorb every last drop of culture disappears. The white walls are lined with four large canvases with colored squares stretching to their perimeters. There is no one else in the gallery and even if there were I wouldn’t notice. Stillness and calm wash over and slowly the saturated canvases envelop me.

The artist, Mark Rothko came to America from Russia as a child, arriving at Ellis Island at the height of its glory days. His success imitates the ideals of the American dream and spirit drilled into us from a young age. Work hard and you will succeed. I used to think Rothko’s paintings were a poor excuse for art, because I felt anyone could paint a colored square, until I stared at one for a very long time, so long that I was submerged into a world of color. My view was an expanse of red and my mind was clear. Rothko wasn’t painting a red square. He was creating a tool for meditation, something to allow the viewer to quiet the mind and think of nothing, a welcome refuge in a chaotic world. Perhaps Rothko’s world was too chaotic, as he tragically ended his own life. Maybe he needed peace too, so he painted paintings with no meaning, no barriers. I am thankful he provided me these few moments of quiet. The Phillips Collection preserves his memory with the only gallery commissioned specifically for the display of his paintings. Taking several deep breaths, I pull my bag back on my shoulder, stand up straight; I am ready to go back into Washington, full of meaning, symbolism and ideals. I turn and glance back as I walk out of the gallery and raise my eyes upwards. “Mark, thanks for this freedom.” Now back to dodging selfie sticks.