Dear Friends from around the world,
There’s so much I could share about my recent visit to the US! It will take a while to fully integrate those intense couple of weeks, and I have some exciting developments I’d like to share in my next newsletter. For now, I’ll focus on this art highlight for you.
Changing my thinking to be more supportive of well-being has been essential as an artist, and also had the benefit of deepening my skills as a mentor and coach. To this end, I attended a retreat offered in Colorado, and it was extraordinary. Although a short visit this time, I was determined to finally visit The Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.
Way beyond my expectations, I’d not seen anything like it. Several Rothko paintings were part of ‘Seeking Stillness’ at the MFA is Boston in 2017, and prior to that, I saw ‘Rothko: The Late Works’ at Tate Modern, in 2008. Nothing compares to this one work comprised of 3 enormous triptychs and 5 single canvases that almost eclipse the octagonal walls of the chapel.
Between 1964 to 1967, Rothko worked on this commission, producing the paintings after and while continuing to collaborate on the non-denominational chapel’s design with architect Phillip Johnson. For the Chapel’s visionary founders – John & Dominique de Menil – their mission for the chapel was to unite spirituality and social change, for which they believed art is essential. The integrated package known as The Rothko Chapel has now been doing its’ work for fifty years, with over 100,000 visitors each year.
When I first heard about The Rothko Chapel, there was an immediate sense of resonance; a sense of my kind of place made by my kind of artist. Rothko’s paintings have intrigued and soothed me in their myriad variations from the multiforms to monochromes over many years. He continues to inspire me on my path to being a painter who makes work for sacred/contemplative spaces.
The Chapel entry is opposite the street frontage on Sul Ross Street, Houston. The searing heat of the day persisted until late into the evening. I was very grateful to enter the foyer and be enveloped by the cool darkness. Standing there alone for a few moments, I thanked him, Rothko. and walked in.
The paintings were an immediate surprise. Astonishingly large, later, I discovered they’d entered the building via the roof, fourteen of them, considered one work of art. Where to look?! With three guards watching your every move, one is not alone, however, in looking meditation all else falls away eventually. A magnetic presence, the triptych opposite the main entry, is around seven metres wide and perhaps five metres high. The middle panel is layered with thousands of visible marks. The more I look, a lavender cast appears within the grey centre and a reddish cast to the inside corner of the left canvas. The central panel seems to be bursting with light…
The subtleties are not visible in photographs due to the huge scale of the works, and This photo will give you a sense of the space and how the paintings occupy it. Here’s a draft of thoughts that came to me while looking. No need to think too much about them, just notice if any images come to mind as I intend to share a sense of experiencing Rothko’s paintings:
1. I paint the light
That belongs
To everyone. Even if it appears darkly.
Especially as it appears darkly.
2. Both and.
Light dark
Colour non colour
Material ephemerality
Brushy marks and dissolution
layer
After layer
After layer
Merging partly and fully
Arrested in becoming
and complete.
3. Triptychs – arms wide open
Giant imminent enfoldings
Or emphatic centre with sentinels
Rothko.
Thank you.
4. Marks dissolve and fall
Falling
Deeper
deeper
Desiring to plum
The depths
Of plum
And darker, deeper
Yearning the peace of
The Final Black
But
Painting made of Life
could not
Be Life’s absence.
5. Rather
Descent and rising
happen at the same time
exactly
Spiritus Sanctus
In flight
Inherent
Innate.
How do I know?
We all know, given we stop
for long enough
wait listen.
6. Third triptych from the left –
Pieces of eternity encased
The central panel has slipped
the moment extended
some thing in process
Compositionally anchored
By two blocks
Or two wings
7. Back wall
stops the world
Alone, it is clearly enough
A message.
Oval of absorbed/reflected light hovers
two-thirds the way up
The one with the most
Red-violet
Fenced field of red-violet tenderness
Encompasses one’s heart
when seated.
8. Held by a fine square container
With rare and wiggly pockets of arterial intensity
Know this glowing corner
Of … love, really.
Resonates through
heart’s large room
Open front and back.
9. The marks have melted
At the boundary of centre and casing
The boundary, appearing definite,
moves. How so?
Multiple layers overlap slightly;
A mutable boundary; territories nudge each other
Resolute iterations
I AM here
and I AM here too
Life force
Soul force
More like a lake.
10. Head stretches back
Take
A deep breath of inspiration
Another of sublimity
And rest.
11. Note the lower boundary
Between dark centre and red-violet container
might be the half hour before dawn
Very first light ever so
Slightly brightening ever so
Gently illuminates the horizon
Reaches the beholder
Offers
This new day.
12. The centre at around 12:30pm
brims with light
A diver coming up to the surface at night?
No
The space is too tense
Like compressed air
Wanting
TO BE somewhere and
This IS the place.
13. I don’t know the time
Do the many hours of making soak
up more hours like a sponge?
Is time sucked into
The Paintings’
Timelessness
With lost thoughts and prayers
returning to the essential fabric –
Light emptiness?
Or clay?
14. Note the range of violets –
Blue-violet
Violet
Red-violet
rough gems
Near zones of meeting
touched down
Touching.
15. Float on through
One’s eyes
One’s being caressed by illuminated
dark feathers
Another chapter starts now.
16. The field
Offers a portion of what might be possible;
For you
a piece of household-scale geometry
Indifferent and steadfast
Arms.
One size fits all.
17. Constriction in my chest
Little cords holding down, holding back
Give way
Plummy earths ground
And
A cloudy field carries
One
I am here
in painted space
Touching space.
Thank you, Rothko.
Mark.
If you’ve read this far, thank you!
With gratitude for the power of art!
Suzanne
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