Capture Your Grief, Day 27

Today's topic: Artwork

Ha. I am not creative in the least. I believe I have been known to say, "Pinterest can suck it." However, I do have some artistic things that remind me of Weston. Well, everything reminds me of Weston, but here are some things that fall into today's category.

The W is obviously for Weston. I bought it at Anthropologie about a month after Weston died. Anthropologie is kind of artistic, right? I haven't done anything with it yet.

The postcard is of a painting called Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth. My sister sent me this postcard in June. I spent over half of June in the hospital.

This is one of my sister's favorite paintings. The woman is Wyeth's neighbor; she had polio and was paralyzed. According to my sister, Wyeth intended for this painting to be hopeful, rather than depressing. My mom, sister, and I had a lively debate about this painting a few years ago: my mom and I (the realists) thought it was horribly depressing, and my sister (the idealist) thought it was beautifully hopeful.

What a difference a few years makes. I remembered our discussion as soon as I saw this postcard, and I changed my position to that of my sister's (sorry, Mom!). Hope was all Weston and I had to get us through during that last month of my pregnancy when things were really bad.

Even more interestingly, I did some research on the painting and discovered that Wyeth painted it three years after his father was killed in an accident. In general, his paintings changed after his father's death: "his palette became muted, his landscapes barren and his figures-if present-seemed plaintive. Christina's World epitomizes these traits and conveys the impression that it is an outward expression of Wyeth's inner grief." www.arthistory.about.com.

I feel like the paralyzed woman now. It's hard to see in this picture, but she is looking and crawling toward a house in the upper right corner of the picture. I am that woman, trying to crawl home but unable to make it there. But I still see the element of hope that my sister loves so much: as impossible as it looks to reach home, she struggles to get there with all of her heart.

In keeping with the art theme, I'll close with a poem:

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all

And sweetest in the gale is heard
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm

I've heard it in the chillest land
And on the strangest sea
Yet never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~Emily Dickinson