Hollow Shadows, Hopeful Light

Originally Posted Tuesday, October 8, 2013

I fear running out of Hopper paintings to post.  He couldn't provide them at the pace I need for a daily blog.  But these sure have taken the pressure off me to produce.  I haven't taken a picture (in the studio) for a long while now, and I am relieved of the burden.  I look at Hopper's paintings, though, and want to capture the isolation and loneliness of people as he has,  all posture and atmosphere, tone and light.  These are not 21st century Americans, we know.  The empty hollowness of their lives is something else, something suffered through.  There is little to turn them away from it but reading and music and the rituals of living.  The hollowness engulfs them, but they are stoic.  They present themselves as best they can--silently. 

All the endless chatter of our era--that will be a hallmark for future artists--the empty crying complaints that is such stark contrast to prior generations. 

I read today that Americans 55-65 outperform other generations in literacy and numeracy.  A report of the study is in today's Times (link).  I am certain that I score in the upper percentile of that generation.  I've often felt it, the dumbing of the world, without having more than anecdotal evidence.  Perhaps that is why I've preferred so often to be alone. 

And that is what appeals to me in the paintings of Hopper, the isolation and aloneness that one knows must border on loneliness and despair but which somehow comes across as a not quite unattractive melancholy that is counterbalanced by hope.  Human fate and human hope, human existence balanced perilously in between. 

I like the silences of these paintings, the lack of chatter.  There is little use in talking.  We rarely understand one another.  These paintings look the way "Winesburg, Ohio" reads.  Tone and hue, shadow and light.  There is beauty in these things.  There is something for which to hope.