Art is the Solution

Strange Garden Source: Wikimedia Commons I first encountered the painting Strange Garden while doing research on another piece of art, and I knew immediately that it would be the perfect painting to brighten up these short November days. The piece was created by Polish artist Józef Mehoffer, who was well known as a painter and a designer of items like textiles and stained glass. His work was inspired by the Symbolist and Post-Impressionist movements. Although he was relatively famous in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, today he is virtually unknown outside of Poland. Strange Garden was painted between 1902 and 1903, when Mehoffer had already become a successful and well-known artist. The piece was created while Mehoffer was on vacation with his family and depicts members of the family standing in a lush garden. The focal point of the painting is a small, nude boy in the foreground. The boy holds bunches of flowers in each hand and seems to glow from within. The boy ...