Redtree Times

Student and Master— Now at West End Gallery

It seems to be very hard for people to live with riddles or to let them live, although one would think that life is so full of riddles as it is that a few more things we cannot answer would make no difference. But perhaps it is just this that is so unendurable, that there are irrational things in our own psyche which upset the conscious mind in its illusory certainties by confronting it with the riddle of its existence.

–Carl Jung

I was looking at an image of this painting, Student and Master, this morning. It’s in my Eye in the Sky exhibit at the West End Gallery show that is in its final week before coming down next Thursday, August 24.

This is a painting that pleases me on several levels. I am drawn to it aesthetically by its colors, forms, and composition. And I am also drawn to it on an intellectual level where I see in it a series of questions or riddles with what seems to be few, if any, answers.

It has an enigmatic feel. Very Sphinx-like in that I can look upon it, seeing and appreciating it as it is, yet walk away wondering why it is as it is.

I can only describe the feeling I get from it as one of uneasy comfort. I feel both soothed by it yet am made fully aware of the unanswerable riddles that surround us. Maybe Jung was on the mark with the thought that life often feels unendurable because of our mind’s desire for certitude in an uncertain world. A desire for rationality in an irrational world.

Or maybe we should take another view into consideration, that of Mark Twain in his 1899 fictionalized essay, Christian Science:

Let us consider that we are all partially insane. It will explain us to each other; it will unriddle many riddles; it will make clear and simple many things which are involved in haunting and harassing difficulties and obscurities now.

If we admit that we are all somewhat insane then nothing is really a riddle because then rationality and logic don’t really carry much weight. Sounds like we are about to that point, doesn’t it?

The fact that this little painting spawns so much thought makes it a memorable piece for me, the image of which I am sure I will be revisiting many times in the future.

Well, as many times as there will be in this uncertain and irrational world.

Speaking of uncertain and irrational things, I now have to get to work on the interpretative dance piece I have planned for tomorrow’s Gallery Talk, which is now at FULL CAPACITY.

Now, get outta of here.