New Bloom by Taylor Tomlinson

Art can express every emotion that you can think of. Sadness, happiness, loneliness, all can be found in some work of art, even if the artist did not intend it to be that way. The picture I chose to interpret is called New Bloom, by Thomas Southey. Thomas Southey said that he found the picture to express the cycle of life, and death was just another part of the cycle. I particularly liked this picture before I knew much about it because, well, it is kind of hard to explain. There was something about it that tugged at my memory, or maybe reminded me of something that I couldn’t fully comprehend. It may just have to do with the simplicity of the whole picture. It is merely an old lady, sitting, staring at something that we can not see, a picture of a rose next to her. Simplicity is real beauty to me, not the complicated ways of life now days. Maybe that is what made me like the picture, the pure simplicity of it all.

Our group decided to put it into the censorship page because the initial feel that we got was fear. Fear, like she was hiding something, waiting to see if she was going to be caught. It was like Fahrenheit 451 and the people who are so desperate to keep their books. They try to live normal lives, but maybe when they go home they feel scared they are going to be caught, but after I looked at the picture again, I got a slightly different feel. It was almost like resignation of the things to come. Of course, as mentioned above, it had nothing to do with my first reaction, but more of the second feel. I can see from the author’s viewpoint how it could be about the cycle of life, but this picture can be interpreted in so many ways, so it is impossible to say what viewpoint is the correct viewpoint. I guess there never is a correct viewpoint with art, just opinions.