“Reverie“- Coming to the West End Gallery
There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.
-Washington Irving, A Colloquy in Westminster Abbey
I am not sure if this new painting, Reverie, is the quiet haunt or the air castle here.
Maybe both.
It certainly has the feel and atmosphere of a daydream to me or maybe a meditative state. It has a sense of calm stillness that is often a goal for me in my work– and in my mind.
I would write more but I am in the final hours of preparation of work for my upcoming show before delivering it to the West End Gallery tomorrow so that the gallery can be hung and ready before next Friday’s opening. As much as I would like nothing more than to spend an hour lost in Reverie, there is still much more for me to do.
So, in lieu of writing I will let a piece of music do the talking, one whose title I poached for this painting. The piece of music, Reverie, is from composer Claude Debussy and is performed here by the pianist Lang Lang. For those of you not familiar with Lang Lang, he is a rock star among the classical set.
While a child of three in China, his first exposure to western classical music came in the form of Tom and Jerry cartoon that featured Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody. It set his future in motion. Trained at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Lang Lang became one of the most celebrated classical musicians of this generation.
I like his playing here. It definitely sets the scene for a short reverie before I get to work.
Maybe it’s a morning for daydreaming. There’s a sharp crispness in the air this morning that reminds me of autumn mornings, gloriously cool and bright. But we’re lingering in July with the gauzy summer days of August still before us, so there is still a bit of time before those fall mornings arrive. So I’ll daydream of those days ahead.
Redtree Times 