The Watcher in the Window
The night crept on apace, the moon went down, the stars grew pale and dim, and morning, cold as they, slowly approached. Then, from behind a distant hill, the noble sun rose up, driving the mists in phantom shapes before it, and clearing the earth of their ghostly forms till darkness came again.
~Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop (1840)
I am still vacillating over whether the painting above will be included in my October exhibit at the West End Gallery. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I would share it here. It’s one of those pieces that have such personal meaning that it’s hard to tell if that same meaning or feeling that will come across to others.
Or if my personal feelings keep me from judging the painting on its own artistic merits.
I woke up in the dark one morning a few weeks back with this painting firmly planted in my mind. There was a definite image I felt compelled to put down in paint it was painted it quickly that same day as though it were a task that needed to be completed at once. It couldn’t wait.
The image in my head changed as it went on the canvas. Little attention was paid to detail and much was pared away as I worked. It became more about capturing the feeling of that original image rather than replicating it, since most of the details were unimportant to anyone but me.
The result is a piece that feels a bit like folk art. Not that I care what label someone might attach to it. Call it whatever pleases you. Call it a cat box liner if you wish.
I call it The Watcher in the Window.
A short version of the backstory is that when I was growing up, we lived in a large old farmhouse that was built around the time of the Civil War. It was isolated from the other houses up and down the road on which it was located. It was a creaky and somewhat creepy place with little hidden nooks and crannies, a mysterious locked room on the second floor that our landlord claimed was just storage for some of his furniture though my kid mind felt it held something much more nefarious, a Widow’s Watch on its roof, and a walk-up attic that still haunts my dreams.
Opening the door to the stair leading up to the attic was like that moment in the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy opens the door after the tornado and the film goes from sepia to vivid color. Only in this case, it was in reverse. Everything was coated in an ancient brown wood dust, illuminated by the light from the attic windows. There was ladder that went up to the Widow’s Watch which we never were able to access.
It was a place that felt strange and ominous to me as a kid, one that had its own presence, its own personality. I had many disturbing dreams about that attic space when we lived there and long after.
Even now, once in a while.
But even so, for all the time I spent alone in that big, isolated house and in that attic, I never felt threatened in any way. It was spooky at times, but it was more in that Halloween-y, want-to-be-scared kind of way that so appeals to some kids. Nothing more ominous than that.
It was more like the house and that attic was simply a watchful entity, one that existed in its own time and place that somehow overlapped ours. For all I know, I may have seemed like an apparition or ghost to it.
The watcher part comes from the numerous times I would find myself in the side yard under the attic window. Many times, I felt as though someone was watching me. I would glance quickly up at that attic window, fully expecting to see someone looking down at me.
Thankfully, nobody ever was there in the window. I don’t know how that would have went over in my kid brain.
I drive by that place periodically and it still has a presence and personality of its own for me. I wonder if the Watcher in its window still resides in that place.
Or does it only linger in my memory now?
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