Redtree Times

Nothing is old, nothing is new, save the light of grace underneath which beats a human heart. The way of feeling, of understanding, of loving; the way of seeing the country, the faces that your father saw, that your mother knew. The rest is chimerical…

–Georges Rouault, Soliloques (1944)

I try not to employ quotes from other artists unless I am also sharing their work, especially when the words are from artists whose work I greatly admire, such as Georges Rouault. I have featured his work here a number of times over the years and readily cite him as an influence on my early work.

But this morning, I felt that Rouault’s words fit perfectly with what I was seeing and feeling in this painting, A Prayer For Understanding. 

My feeling from this piece is that we often get so consumed with small and ephemeral things that we lose sight of those things that truly have meaning for us. These are those things that bind us to our family, our land, and the universe beyond. Things that create our understanding of our existence, both in our time here in the ephemeral world and in our unknowable life that comes both before and after our time here. 

It is an understanding that comes not from words or action. It is formed in stillness and observation.

It doesn’t live in the regrets or glories of the past nor in the hope or fears of the future. 

Its existence is only in that silent, watchful moment when the rhythms of all things converge and time dissolves in light like sugar in water. As Rouault put it: Nothing is old, nothing is new, save the light of grace underneath which beats a human heart.

That is where understanding dwells, always nearby yet always so far away in the grace of the human heart.

The painting shown here is A Prayer For Understanding. It is 30″ by 15″ on canvas and is included in my current solo show at the West End Gallery, Guiding Light. The exhibit closes next Thursday, November 13. Hope you can get in to see it.

Here’s one of my favorite compositions from composer Philip Glass. It’s a piece originally from a soundtrack of the 1985 film Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. The full title of this particular selection is String Quartet #3 Movement VI (also called Mishima Closing) and is performed by the Catalyst Quartet. I have shared this piece a couple of times over the years from other artists. This performance seems to fit well with the painting as I see it.