While searching for a piece of music to feature here this morning, I found myself looking over at this new painting shown here as I listened to the music. As usual, the search had me running down rabbit holes that sent me in all different directions, none that satisfied me enough to want to share it.
Then I somehow ended up on this modern classical piano piece from composer Phillip Glass, Etude No. 14, played by pianist Vikingur Olafsson. There’s a part in it, starting at about 1:15, that the sound and this painting just seemed to mesh for me, filling out the feeling that I was experiencing as I was taking it in.
It is a painting that is still on the easel, near completion or so I think. I am in that part of the process where I am still examining it, absorbing it to see what it has for me, what it’s trying to say to and for me. And here, the music created a narrative line that pulled me and the image together.
It’s hard to explain. Everybody sees art differently, having different expectations of what they hope to extract from it, if anything. I think a lot of folks don’t even think about those expectations and just react to what is before them. I do that as well and it is generally gives a true response.
But more often I see art as an existential puzzle with pieces that provide clues as to our meaning and purpose. There are works that attract me and I search them for these clues, trying to figure out if there are answers or where it will send me next in my search. In this painting, the Glass music helped me see what I had only sensed before.
As I said, it’s hard to explain.
Anyway, give a listen and have yourself a good Sunday. By the way, I am calling this painting Etude No. 14.
My immediate reaction to this painting was, “Look at that — two Red Trees!” The one we’re accustomed to seeing seems to be standing atop a second, more abstract tree that’s masquerading as a landscape, with its branches — so similar to those in your usual Red Tree — also reaching toward the sky.
It’s like seeing a Bach-tree perched atop a Phillip Glass tree.
*It’s like seeing a Bach-tree perched atop a Phillip Glass tree*. — I like that.
This is one of those rare paintings where I has an idea going in, this time the idea of a tree atop the landscape tree, as you recognized, and it works.Well, at least, I think it does. Normally, these pieces don’t work for me, never seem to achieve a sense of wholeness or have a real rhythm and life to them.
It certainly worked in this instance!