Two Pictures

I went to the Alte Nationlgalerie in Berlin and saw this painting:

Photos do not do it justice - it glowed, it shimmered, it smouldered. I gazed at it for many minutes. It’s by painter Julius Hubner of his wife Pauline. The blushing shell spilling dirt; the fingers in the jewel box; the smile. It’s so provocative, it almost makes you angry, in a way I loved.
A few weeks later, I went to the Art Gallery of Mississauga where there was an exhibit called “10x10”, which is a multi-year project with each year featuring 10 portraits by 10 artists celebrating queers in the arts. And I saw this portrait:

…which is a photo of the artist Anna Daliza, by Jason Perreault.
I was struck by some similarity here, and I don’t just mean some superficial resemblance between the two subjects - the isolated natural object to the side, the presence of drapery. Or maybe that’s part of it but, something else about these two wildly separate pictures, that I happened to see in a short span of time on different sides of the ocean, resonated. Maybe just two subjects being boldly themselves in a similar way. It’s things like this, that epitomize how art can delight me and make me happy. I can’t describe why: just show you two striking pictures. And if you’re in either Berlin or Mississauga, go check them out.