Rapt in Reverie

Exhibitions:

* 'It's Pastel!',  PSNH Nat'l Juried Exhibition, Thornhill Art Gallery, Portsmouth, NH 

During my recent visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, I ambled into a gallery filled with 19th-century portraits, pausing before the works of Anders Zorn and John Singer Sargent. Yet it wasn’t the masterful canvases alone that caught my attention. A young girl, who had been eyeing the Sargent, turned and stopped in front of Zorn’s Mrs. Potter Palmer.

Her casual presence — pink t-shirt and shorts, a book in hand — contrasted sharply with the opulent portrait nearly twice her height. Together, they formed a striking pair: viewer and subject, innocence and elegance, the fleeting now conversing with the enduring past. I found myself wondering what questions, dreams, or imaginings crossed her mind.

Though this is a figurative work, it is also a meditation on the role of art itself. Like classical music waiting to be played, paintings hold and release universal truths that echo across centuries — sparking emotion, curiosity, and flights of fancy. They leave us, as she was, rapt in reverie.