Light and Darkness

Pathway Through the Trees 36”x36”

I picked up a copy of Edward Hopper and the American Imagination from a used book store recently, mostly for the color plates in the back, but last week I started reading some of the short stories and poems collected alongside Hopper’s paintings in this compilation. They are eerie and lonely as one would expect any writing to be that is paired with Hopper’s paintings. I have always been drawn to Hopper’s paintings. I think they speak to the sense of longing and loneliness innate to us as humans living in a world that has been fractured and disconnected. But as Deborah Lyons states in her introduction to the book, Hopper “[assures] us that we are not alone in our aloneness, and that we may yet find redemption in the sunlight.” Oh, that my paintings would be able to speak to the hope of redemption found in the Light! This is one of my primary goals in painting, and my guess is that this quest will be ongoing for the rest of my life (or as long as I am able to paint.) I am grateful for Hopper’s example of juxtaposing the darkness and loneliness of this world with the light.

Later in this collection of writings is a poem by John Hollander, Sun in an Empty Room, and in it a line: “No doubt, a mind can be preoccupied with light like that which occupies a room on a daily basis.” My mind is always preoccupied with the light - the morning light flooding into my bedroom window, especially this time of year when the sun’s path is changing and the light streams through at an angle that could make me cry; the dappled light filtering through the green leaves of spring or the reds and oranges of fall or the bare branches of winter; the strong afternoon light radiating through clouds to reveal colors beyond my comprehension. Why are we as humans preoccupied with light? I don’t think I am alone in this. I don’t know a single person who does not love the warmth and beauty of the light from sunshine after a week of cloudy days or the dancing light from a candlestick on the dinner table or the magic of dappled sunshine streaming through the leaves of a forest. We are all drawn to the light in some way or another.

This question of why light not only preoccupies my mind but also causes a physiological reaction in my body is one of my driving motivations to paint. I want to capture it. I want to convey the visceral feeling of it. I want to speak in a whisper, like the telling of a secret, that the darkness has not won, that light continues to stream into the cracks in our hearts and the places that feel as if darkness has overcome. In a world that often feels as if it is teeming with darkness, the light assures me that darkness does not have the final say.