This piece, Seems Like a New Sun, is part of the show currently hanging at the Haen Gallery in Asheville, NC. It’s a cityscape, a genre I enjoy mainly because of the abstract quality of shape and color that is formed by building up the structures.
At the opening for the show, someone asked if this painting was of a necropolis, a city of the dead or cemetery. They cited the lack of windows and doors and said that it reminded them of those in Paris and New Orleans, where many of the graves are housed above-ground in beautiful small mausoleums. This kind of took me back a little because the idea had never entered my mind at any point in the creation of this piece but when I looked again it made perfect sense, in more than the obvious way.
I have always been attracted to cemeteries of all sorts and when we travel (a rarity these days) Cheri and I generally find a cemetery and walk around it, admiring the stones and mausoleums. I read the names and epitaphs, trying to discern what sort of life they indicate. Some find this morbid but I find it fascinating and very peaceful and in some ways, invigorating and reinforcing of life. There is a lot to be said in the way a culture treats its dead.
We have a beautiful cemetery in our home area, Woodlawn Cemetery, that was created in the heyday of “burial parks” in the mid-19th century. It has a rolling landscape with beautiful old growth trees and meandering roads. Very nice. It’s home now to Mark Twain, Hal Roach, Ernie Davis and others. Adjoining it is a national cemetery where there are the remains of a number of Confederate soldiers from the Civil War who perished in the notorious prisoner of war camp at Elmira. There is history everywhere if we only look.
This is Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Evita Peron is its most famous resident. Quite a striking sight amid the sprawl of the living city. Maybe there is some validity in the viewer’s question…
Redtree Times 