I love art. Although I do not have much creativity on art, I do get a lot of happiness from the works of art. Yesterday I went to National Portrait Gallery. And today we went to Tate Britain. I enjoyed the portraits and paintings too much. Actually, I like Tate Modern more. I prefer the art with more imagination and abstract thinking. I cannot understand Picasso’s painting without reading the illustration, but I admire his creativity and out of circle thinking. After London Literature class, I am kind of fascinated with symbolism. I would like to find more secrets behind every work, every period, and every style. Art, like writing, is a way of the authors to express their understandings. Art, as another way, is used as photography to record the history, which I strongly felt from the historical paintings in National Portrait Gallery. At first, I did not like the Portrait painting too much. Every painting seems similar, just showing the dedicated dressing royal family. However, after following the arranged chronologically display, from the Tudors 1485-1603, the Stuarts 1603-1714, Rebellion to reform 1714-1790, Late 18th to early 19th century, the Victorians 1837-1901, early 20th century, to late 20th century, I not only knew more about the England history, holding a whole concept of the timeline, but also through approached the famous persons to understand the significance of each period. As well, the careful and abortive paintings characterized every famous people- queen or king, politicians or drawers. When I saw the picture of Charles Dickens, I was so happy, like I saw my old friend among the hundreds of famous people. You can see how deeply the class influenced me.

Today I found a new my favorite person-Waterhouse. I do not know him at all before I went to Tate Britain this morning. I was attracted at first sight of this painting which I posted as the last picture. The name of the painting is Carnation, lily, lily, rose. It was drawn by Waterhouse in 1885. I do not know how to describe my feeling about this painting. I feel it is combined reality with imagination. The color is very transparent and bright. I can also feel pure and peaceful inside the picture. I believe it is the reason I like this painting immediately. In fact, every painting of Waterhouse has the same style- every refined drawing and unique constructed.

Today is also the last day of our class. It makes me think a little more. I told everyone that my eyes are hungry and I want to see more in London. I did not think the reason why I want to get more information before writing this blog. Like visiting museums and galleries, like traveling and studying, all the experiences make you more individualism. We know we enrich ourselves through seeing different things. We can also get more personal thinking from different perspectives. Literature and Art, from the abstract side, let us know more about ourselves. I am improving my realizing of new things. We can discover more about ourselves and understand what we want through getting more information.