● Liminal Space ●

I've always wanted to understand Art Galleries.

I remember going on trips while I was still in school, and a staff member would wind us through exhibitions, while we scribbled down answers on compulsory handouts. The man leading us would rave on the artworks like they were the most ingenious thing he'd ever seen, as if the meaning behind them was his reason for living. I remember wondering that young if it will always be over my head, and if the small, untrained sketches in my lined notebook – which I felt somehow justified me to ask arty questions – would ever be someone's reason for passion. But still, I'd travel the rooms with friends and we'd count and choose artworks that we liked for our projects, as if we were finding Mickey Mouse heads in Disney sand sculptures.

I went there again with school but only with girls for my Studio Art class. Then it was all business, taking notes and trying to remember every detail for the sake of an essay we will have to recite later. Still, I remember thinking that I'd always feel like I was pretending. Always feel like I was switching into a different persona when I stood in front of another's talent. I'd be smart then, and deep and intricate. I'd be someone who thought about things on a whole another level, and could comprehend another's quizzical musings simply through the type of brush strokes they used.

But, in reality, I wasn't interested; as much as I wanted to be. Even as I got older and tried to earn the title of 'artist', if a friend got excited about a new exhibition and invited me, it still wasn't my first thought to say 'yes'. Even though I couldn't stop thinking about my future, and if the training Art School could give me was really needed in my life, everything but the art of creating art seized my interest.

So, all in all, I was questioning why I was still standing in front of a torturing, red and black portrait of Marilyn Monroe, the huge, white room of the gallery eerily quiet around me. My boots – which I did in fact choose for this very outing, since I bought them at an op shop and they seemed to provide the perfect amount of weird for me to pass as a girl who understands art –scuffed on the equally shabby wooden flooring as I turned away from the bright painting that almost matched the height of the plain, gallery wall.

That's another thing I never really liked about galleries. Their plainness. Fine art lovers would scream at me and say "It's called minimalism!" or say something about the aesthetics of it all. But to me, it's still just boring.

I tucked my hands behind my back as I tried to walk as slow as I could – it seemed to be the custom where I was – as if the unhurried steps would trick my brain into pondering about something other than what I was going to eat for lunch. I sighed and stopped to look up at another one of those huge paint-splatty paintings that always made me wonder how much skill was used on a scale of one to ten. One being 'a five-year-old might have done it' and ten would be something similar to Eloy Morales or Leonardo Di Vinci. That's the ignorant rating system I stick to anyway – the same understanding that landed me into disputes with my art teachers in high school.

I dragged my eyes from the painting and surveyed the other people in the room. There were only a couple of other people, even though the room was so big and I could hear the echoes of their relaxed footsteps. An older couple gazed at the art together with their backs to me, leaning to exchange their comments in whispers. The woman was dressed in a vibrant red, and her partner wore a tailored suit, which pulled when he pointed. Their living room at home probably looked just like a miniature version of the one we were standing in now, and I smiled and admired their class.

A younger man was closer to me, his mop of dark hair falling back as his head turned upwards at the Monroe painting I was looking at before. The starkness of his white shirt was what caught my eye; mostly because it was so much like the walls around me, it looked like it should have an abstract piece plastered to the front of it. I watched as he slightly tilted his head, and looked the painting up and down. He seemed to be seeing so many things I couldn't.