Scheherazade

One Thousand and One Nights, Henri Matisse, 1950

 True love can happen anywhere. It was Pittsburgh for me.

As a young designer at college, the Sarah Scaife Gallery (Carnegie Museum of Art) near campus became my second home. Spending innumerable hours there I fell hopelessly and eternally in love. The object of my love - Henri Matisse’s One Thousand and One Nights.

An explosive yet harmonious union of colors and shapes arranged in a playful landscape. Its elements exquisitely layered, like icing on a cake, with a story.

Soul-stirring.

That was it.

My flame was lit.

Admittedly, I am a museum junkie. I love the quiet, the serenity, the ability to just sit and look, and look, and look, and look some more. I find a kind of peace in museums that eludes me elsewhere. Lucky and fortunate me, I have been to many, here and in Europe. Yet I always come back to Pittsburgh. Matisse stole my heart just as Scheherazade stole the heart of a vengeful king with a story. A story that never ends. A story that ultimately saved all the women in the kingdom. What a clever, undaunted, fearless warrior Scheherazade was and how brilliant Matisse was to tell the story just so.