People Will Do Weird Things When They Are Bored

Ed, my neighbor next door, was suffering from a full blown case of boredom last week. He talked to me at the post office Tuesday morning and learned that we were planning to travel to Yorkton in the afternoon. In his boredom, he asked to ride along to Yorkton. Ed assumed that we would be going to Walmart or the mall, as he likes to shop in Yorkton if it doesn’t cost him anything for gas.

In the car on the way into Yorkton, Ed found out that we were going to the Godfrey Dean Art Gallery, and his boredom turned to panic. My neighbor is a tough art critic. He only likes realistic art. He is very vocal in saying that it isn’t art unless you can see what it is supposed to be. Ed said to me that he supposed that I had some useless information to share about art. I said, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Then I threw out some other quotes that I like for Ed. I told him the artist Andy Warhol said, “An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.” Ed agreed with Andy that people don’t need to have paintings especially if they don’t make any sense. Ed rejected the words of another artist’s words that, “A painting is never finished, as it simply stops in interesting places.”

As it turned out, Ed was okay with the visit to the art gallery. He did not have to pay any admission fee. When we pointed out where he could give a free will offering, he totally ignored us, as if, he had no experience in that regard. Ed said that if you are bored enough, you will do anything, even visit an art gallery. I think we went to a good art exhibit for Ed. It was called ‘Fields of Light’ and some of the art did reflect fields. Ed found a painting with grain that impressed him so much that he could not find anything negative to say. Ed was not so kind to art from potash or art with buttons, but he kept going back to the picture with wheat that he admitted he liked.

Ed doesn’t like any of the pictures I have painted, or even the ones I haven’t painted. In my office, I have a painting that Ed feels that I should throw away. The glass in the frame covering the picture is partly missing. It is a reproduction print of the ‘The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci. It has been called the most famous picture in the world. It is a painting of Jesus’ last supper with his apostles. It depicts the situation when Jesus told his disciples that one of them will betray him. The painting shows the consternation among the twelve disciples. The faces of the disciples are stricken by the accusation of pending betrayal. Their faces display the look of, surely it’s not me, like a child being caught with a hand in the cookie jar. Their faces say, without words, “Not me – couldn’t be!” The observances of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday focus our consternation that sinless Jesus had to die for sinful sinners like us.

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