Sadly, sunsets are regarded as a kind of cliché in the art world. That may be because all the colors involved are just too brilliant — how many times have you sat watching the sky explode into impossibly purple purples, garish pinks and redder-than-reds and thought, “Am I really seeing this?” Plus, now that people think you’re referring to a vampire novel every time you say the word “twilight,” it can be kind of a hard sell.
Then again, sometimes artists nail it.
Sunset by Mark David Smith on Zatista.com
The setting for a sunset really isn’t that important if you think about it. It might add emphasis, but I know for myself at least, part of it is that I often don’t make a point of watching the sun dip below the horizon unless I’m on vacation. Granted, a drink with an umbrella and a scene witnessed from a beach chair has a certain way of enhancing any experience, but there’s no need to only enjoy this time of day in that capacity.
Sunset Over Brooklyn by Dominique James on Zatista.com
Of course, stunning settings don’t hurt, either.
Twilight by Fahd Husain on Zatista.com
So you know what? I’m OK with being cliché. Everybody loves a sunset, I’m just going to own it. Those brilliant colors are my kind of colors. And dusk is my kind of time. It’s like the world is lulling us to sleep, or reminding us that tomorrow is something to look forward to, when it will all happen again.
Seeing Red by Eleanor Gilpatrick on Zatista.com
Sometimes you just need to buy a painting to have around so you remember that all the time.
There’s a reason things become cliché. They are so beautiful or so moving or so exceptional that we all respond to them. When artists respond by painting them and collectors respond by purchasing them, they come to seem commonplace. In the constant quest for the new, the different, the shocking, things that have become familiar are set aside to make way in the lexicon for the latest fashion.
Fortunately for us all, the more perceptive among us, such as yourself, eventually see through the blinds of “fashion” to the beauty before them and bravely follow their own perceptions.
Bravo.