The Portal

“The Portal” (in daylight and in darkness) by Chuck Morkin

I’m watching a series of lectures by John Walsh about Vincent van Gogh.  The Yale Art Gallery is hosting the YouTube series. Van Gogh found magic in the starry nights, as do I.  I’ve sometimes tried to trace a line of travel toward the outermost limit of the universe – and ended laughing. Who can know the fullness? My brain cannot embrace the concept.  The James Webb Telescope brings back all those wonderments. What an amazing era in which to expand our human understanding of Being!    

I note that my paintings look much closer to the earth and specific glimpses of it. The universe is too large to capture on one canvas – or in one mind. But when I paint trees, hills, pathways and water, I’m letting those stand in for the bigger reality.  I hope that for some, these paintings may be a portal to connection to the unreachable and unknowable. 

I’ve been working on a painting called “The Portal.”  It’s harder-edged than most of my work, involving a half-round stone enclosure wall with a portal that leads to a half-round stone amphitheater (I was thinking about the ancient amphitheaters of Rome and Greece).  It started out this morning as a daylight painting (left), but approaching noon, it has just received a night sky (right).  Hmmm. Darkness changes everything. Let’s see what else happens!