Insensible Light

From the artist's statement:

“No doubt in Holland when Van Gogh was a boy…” wrote Mary Oliver and published in 1990 in her poem Everything from the collection, House of Light*.

Van Gogh as a boy. She paints a picture with words.

“there were swans drifting

over the green sea

of the meadows, and no doubt

on some warm afternoon

he lay down and watched them,

and almost thought; this is everything.

What drove him to look further…”

 In her poem, Oliver continues focusing on the light or the lack thereof, echoing in its depth the human journey of the psyche. From the simple physical pleasure of childhood to the adolescent drive toward meaning, the challenge and despair of identity, the lost-ness and final re-membering, returning to a deeper, richer light—

“weightless and unaccountable”

With no attempt to illustrate this work in the figurative or representational, I sought to capture the emotional journey of the subject, the ultimate journey of all of us as we strive through the “grit and hopelessness” which is "only terrible” toward our hopeful outcome of compassion and embracing the complex paradigm of our own humanness through layers of abstract expressionism.  I approached these twelve pieces using the palate of Van Gogh, inspired by his tireless attempts to demonstrate the light. Each piece began with selected words from the poem cut into the still wet gesso. Then the layering began, light, dark, light, dark, ochre, umber, ultramarine, yellow, alizarin.

The initial piece, This is Everything, introduces the idea of the light, the beauty of the natural world, the joy of simple pleasures. The second in the series, Look Further, is darker, redder, and draws the viewer into the inescapable desire for more, for meaning, for connection. The organic image has a second component, another idea, an unformed desire. As the viewer progresses through the series, the pieces darken, umber and ultramarine, alizarin and ocher deepening and graying the canvas until finally, “For years he would reach toward the darkness…”—only smidges of light come through. And then…

“But no doubt, like all of us,

he finally remembered

everything,”

And no doubt, like all of us, the remembering of the light, the joy after the darkness, is sweeter, deeper, more complex and more compassionate. The final pieces seek to capture this, using the cobalt, ultramarine, the yellows, viridian, the expressions on the canvas all at once taking flight, settling in, finding that space where, “nothing else mattered, but the insensible light.” 

 *Oliver, Mary. (1990) “Everything,” House of Light. Beacon Press. Boston.