Rembrandt and Running

So what does the world renowned painter and printmaker, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn , whose achievements were part of the Dutch Golden Age have to do with running? If you were to line up his art and running side by side, there is nothing that would seem to make any correlation. But at look at his process and running, and that is where I made the connection.

Last night, the wife and I headed down to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to take in the exhibit that is currently been shown called: Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus. Mind you, I am not well versed in art at all. I once took an  Art Appreciation course in college , and have been to the DIA as well as the Toledo Art Museum and the Art Institute of Chicago but really have no idea of what I am looking at. Simply put, I don’t talk the art lingo nor do I understand how they produce all the different types of mediums out there.

That being said, I did have somewhat of a revelation last night as I wandered around with my audio tour of Rembrandt’s exhibit. As I toured lost in my thoughts with the headphones on, the exhibit talked about how Rembrandt would often begin with sketches before moving onto creating paintings or the other forms of medium that he used. That’s where it started to click. You see, Rembrandt used his sketches as training, building his skills and his foundations before moving onto greater pieces.

How exactly does that translate to running? Our daily runs serve as a foundation for something greater. We can not hope to achieve a PR, distance goal, or health  without having first laying the groundwork. Like Rembrandt, we might start a training program or try out some workouts and find out that they just don’t work for us. So, even though we might scrap it and move on, we have become that much more in tune with ourselves and our craft that we call running.

As a result, I have a much greater appreciation for what painters like Rembrandt were able to create. They didn’t just pick up a brush and create a masterpiece. Their passion for their craft comes through with their tools in which they choose to create their expression. Our tools are our shoes. Run happy my friends.