Outside, the sun was out but it was still relatively cool. Herds of people were moving north from Cherry Creek Mall, following the sound of modern rock music emanating from the next street over from us. I made sure the coast was clear before rushing across the street with my grandparents in tow. It was just after 10:00 AM, and the festival was already busy. But, I went to the festival knowing it would be busy, so I felt relatively comfortable, albeit still a little hesitant, when joining the fray. 

Immediately, I was drawn to a booth adorned with colorful paintings of people. One painting in particular depicted two women in summer dresses, looking at paintings being displayed at an art festival. In fact, it looked like the artist painted that painting while people-watching people at the Cherry Creek Arts Festival. The painting itself cost a whopping $14,500 dollars, and it wasn’t even the most expensive one on display in that booth. 

But, I wasn’t shopping for art. I was looking for inspiration for my own art. And I noted that artist’s colorful style as I braced myself to rejoin the crowd of festival-goers and move onto the next booth. I decided to take some advice from the painting I’d just viewed and people-watch as I waited for my grandparents to finish perusing the booth themselves. 

Most of the festival-goers were old; older than my grandparents, even. Naturally, the crowd moved very slowly and wasn’t as raucous as most festival crowds often were, making it easier for me to immerse myself in the art and enjoy myself. But, I also wasn’t exactly comfortable. I could almost see my social battery draining like my Xterra’s gas tank in the mountains as I stood at the first booth at the art festival, so I craned my neck to glance around for booths that drew in my interest, then B-lined it to the next booth that did just that. 

While I stared at paintings of landscapes clearly inspired by midwestern farmlands, I noticed that while my grandma Connie was standing beside me, my grandpa was nowhere to be found. 

“Where’s grandpa?” I asked her. 

“Oh, he’s probably in the booth behind us talking to the artist.” my grandma answered, “Whenever we go to museums or festivals like these, we usually go our separate ways to do our own things. Grandpa likes to stop and chat, while I just like to look.”

“Ah, makes sense.” I smiled as I went back to studying a painting of an abandoned barn on an endless prairie. 

As I made my way to the outside of that booth, still staring intensely at that artist’s paintings of fields and farms, someone tapped me on the shoulder, startling me. I spun around as a lady asked, “Would you mind taking a picture of us? He just bought one of my biggest paintings!”

Behind the artist was a huge painting of some naked Picasso-style figures in questionable poses, to put it lightly. 

“Uhhh… sure.” I nodded as the lady left me with her phone to pose for the camera in front of her painting with the man who bought it. 

Being the nice person I was, I took several shots and handed the phone back to her. As nice as she was, I didn’t really like her art style, or the mostly-naked figures her paintings portrayed. That said, there’s no denying that she was a very skilled artist and people liked her work enough to fork over thousands of dollars for it. Just because I didn’t find it appealing didn’t mean it was “bad art”. So, I ended up complementing the artist on her use of color theory and went on my way, while she helped her customer cover the painting in bubble wrap.