Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

There is a strangeness to the mornings. This is partly due to my inability to adjust to the time change these past few weeks. But there is more to the peculiarity. Spring’s arrival. The transition from winter, which was mild here, to say the least, to spring was sharp. That is contradictory in itself, but I am referring to the amount of light.

Growing up in New Jersey, winter evenings began around four or five o’clock. Here, twilight comes later. I am partial to the dark hours of winter that settle on me like a blanket. I find pleasure in the smell of snow in the air, the clarity of the night sky, and how much brighter the stars glimmer. The early morning darkness of a new day whispers, “Take five more minutes. There is no rush.” Then there is knocking at the door.

Opening the door, I have to squint. Daffodils, tulips, and crocuses are pushing their way through the mud. Persephone is dressed in a green gown with snowdrops in her hair. I want to tell the Greek goddess of spring to return later with the fellow dancing in the sky. Of course, neither Persephone nor that fellow she introduces as Helios will acquiesce to a mere mortal’s request. So I must content myself with lighter sweaters, the warming sun pouring through the windows, and less star gazing.

Life has its cycles. We are always approaching something new, but when we come to that newness, we also reach the “let go point.” Lately, I have been thinking about the “let go point.” We make numerous transitions in our lives. People come and go. Some enrich us, while others take more than they share or give. Our horizons are opened by the vistas of the places we travel to, the trails we walk, and the roads we travel. The things that once were important to us matter less, replaced by new interests. We are present at the birth of our children, watch them grow, and try to guide them with our wisdom, only to realize we have less wisdom than we think, and what matters is our love for them. Then, before we know it, they are off leading their own lives, and we are grandparents.

This past Sunday, I went to the bookstore and purchased the winter issue of American Art Review magazine. I generally prefer landscape paintings. However, in this particular issue, I was struck by the portraits of F. Edwin Church and Bert Phillips. The paintings I was looking at were done between 1910 and 1947.

It is not only the cultural context of the illustrations, particularly those of Bert Geer Phillips, that caught my attention, but also the faces and the artists’ ability to capture the subjects’ character. Their postures reveal much, as does the background, which provides further insight into the sitter and the artist’s perception of the person. Bert Phillips’ portraits are a visual narrative of his Hispano neighbors in Taos. Through the paintings of Fred Edwin Church, we are introduced to the people of the New York and Long Island high society. There is a sharp contrast to the orbits in which these two moved.

What struck me about both painters was their ability to capture the subjects’ emotions and how those emotions come through their eyes. The glint of light and the direction of the eyes, drawing our attention beyond the canvas while pulling us deeper into the sitter’s character, what she or he thinks and feels. We enter a moment of time that isn’t our own when we allow ourselves to examine and experience the painting fully. We learn about the artists’ personalities as we are introduced to their subjects. Their gazes meet our own, not in a ghostly way across the decades, but in the spirit of our common and shared humanity. Art and artist remind us of our shared humanity, our need for compassion for one another in this Trumpian period.

Springtime reawakens the senses to the possibilities we approach and the “let go point” of the transitions we will make to embrace those possibilities. Art broadens the scope of our vision of what is possible when we listen and observe life’s cycles. Works of art say to us, “Open your eyes and see.”