New paintings, hot off the easel, and some thoughts on art and life ...

    (originally posted April 18, 2010)

This post is the third in a series I'm calling “Gems in the Museums”, about little known paintings in museums.

You could get lost in this painting.  It's big enough to walk into and promising enough to want to.  It belongs to the Phoenix Art Museum, and I hope it still hangs prominently there.  I grew up in Phoenix, where the art museum was next to the main library, and my mother (bless her!) took us to both. 

This isn't my favorite painting in the world, but it's fascinating, especially to a child who is dwarfed by it.  It makes an impression that sticks with you.  I saw it often as I was growing up, then many years later my brother read me the e e cummings poem If There Are Any Heavens, and this painting is what I thought of. 

BTW, e e cummings was also a painter – Google him as an artist and check out some of his artwork.

But back to Stella's painting.  You could think of this canvas as a garden.  Like the one in the poem, this is no pansy and lily of the valley garden – it's something wild and independent, something that exists without you.  A garden that doesn't need your approval, doesn't ask for you admiration.

If There Are Any Heavens

by  e e cummings

if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have

one.  It will not be a pansy heaven nor

a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but

it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose

tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her

silent)

with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which

is a flower and not a face with

hands

which whisper

This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)