Transient

This is part two on recent paintings created from memory.  I decided to write about these two paintings in particular because to me they actually go together as companion pieces.  Though quite different in color and lighting, they have similar compositions and themes.

Last week we took a day trip down to North Carolina to visit family, and to do that we had to pass through Hillsville (appropriately named).  We were dealing with a cool, damp, cloudy, rainy day--not great for traveling.  There were pockets of thick fog where you couldn't see much beyond the bend, and then there were places where the clouds opened up and let just a shaft of light peak through and shine on the newly dressed green hillside.  Alison and I both deeply regretted forgetting the camera (something we often do, and often regret). 

On the ride home we drove back through Hillsville, and again the sky was moving with these monstrous clouds, rain was falling in the far distance, and yet shafts of light were streaming through here and there, piercing this cloud and then that cloud.  And those words of Tolkien again came to my mind as I watched this unfolding transient scene roll before me.

"...In the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

"Throw a little Tolkien and Lewis in there and I think you have something."

I don't usually paint from memory, but Alison is encouraging me to do so more and more.  I usually take photos and work from those, and in the old days I would go out and paint on location.  This is the first of two blogs on two paintings worked from memory.

Recently I finished reading The Lord of the Rings...again, and I always find new little nuggets each time I read it through.  Towards the end of the book when Frodo and Sam are in Morder struggling to get to the end of their journey, Sam begins to lose hope, but then he sees something:

"...There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach."

Driving home one night a couple of weeks ago, we were experiencing some dynamic skies with swirling clouds and storms.  As we traveled along a dark country road I looked up, and in a breaking of the clouds there shone a beautiful star.  I kept looking and looking, and that quote from Tolkien came to my mind and I tried to remember the colors, the mood, the lighting--everything in the hopes of trying to recapture that at some point on canvas.

Last week we attended a local wine, food, and art festival, and I set up an easel and decided to work on a painting while we were there.  That scene came to my mind again, and so I jumped right in and worked up a composition and started laying in color.  Was the image exactly what I saw that night?  No, but it definitely portrayed the mood and feel of that evening for me.  

By the end of the day, I had a finished painting, but I didn't know what to call it.  Though originally in my mind it was an evening scene, Alison said it looked more like morning light, and I agreed, so I thought about naming it "Morning Star," but that didn't seem to fit.  "Call it Perelandra," my brother said.  And there it was...and so I did.  If you're not familiar with the name, it is what C. S. Lewis called Venus in the second book of his space trilogy (also the title of said book).