A month ago, on Aug 5, I happened upon a post at American Digest that brought me up short. At that time the Olympics were about to wrap, Delta-V was the focus of the day, and “Who gives a cluck?” was going on at Levity. The folly behind the Afghanistan debacle was yet to be revealed. Grape thoughts had already started to loosely roll around in my mind. What caught my eye and attention that day was an arresting painting by Conor Walton of a young child holding a key, with a link to an essay about it posted under the heading: “Noted in Passing: Conor Walton: ‘The Key’”
As the essay explained, the child portrayed was the artist’s son who’d undergone a bone marrow transplant to survive leukemia. Following the link opened the door to Walton’s website, where I found among his paintings a grouping entitled, “Bunch of Grapes” Beyond the interest of finding grapes as subject matter and seeing before my eyes what I’d been thinking about and picturing from another perspective, what I appreciated most about the grape link was the way his description of process paralleled my own experience with painting and life.
“The canvas and cluster are placed side-by side so that I can apprehend both in the same glance. Painting at arm’s length with long-handled brushes, I quickly flesh out the form of the cluster, trying to get the painting to match real grapes in overall visual effect.
There is a moment, maybe ten or fifteen strokes in, where the little painting has the potential to be something marvelous, a miracle of atmosphere, economy and truth. There usually follows a prolonged panic as I struggle to advance the painting without undermining that early promise, and I have to hope that the god of painting will lead me not into a floundering mess but deliver instead a sublime improvisation--a glorious ‘accident’. In the end there are quite a few messes (though you’ll never see the worst of those), and none fulfil their early promise, but occasionally something happens that’s still a positive surprise--to me at least. How did that happen? Can I do it again? I’ll have to try.” Conor Walton, 2009
All of which made me wonder: In the presence of prolonged panic, life gone seemingly awry, real clusters observed and endured, and a political and social scene on the verge of becoming a floundering mess, what positive surprises have I recently experienced?
Coming across this artist and affirmation filled the bill as one positive surprise. Another arrived soon after in a poem found in a book by Wendell Berry that I’d left on the shelf for years before a friend’s mention of him invited another look.
In the world forever one
With the informing Love
That gives its life to time
In the day of alchemy
Come round at last, transmuting
Corruption to pollution
Transmuting lies to blindness
And light to dark, the known
Destroyed in our unknowing
Under the sun that shines
Beyond evil and good
The goldeneye alights
On the cold river. Grace
Unasked, merely allowed
Gleams round him on the water.
Wendell Berry
There are days when it’s hard for me to believe informing Love and Grace unasked are present round me. Yet there’s also times when they show up in unusual and surprising ways, as real as grapes of one kind or another.
1 comment:
There are days when it’s hard for me to believe informing Love and Grace unasked are present round me yet there’s also times when they show up in unusual and surprising ways
As your post did, MamaM, for me.
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