The Path Ahead
This artwork reminds me of my college’s original 1867 colors: pink and gray. The students selected the colors to stand for “the rose of sunrise dawning over the gray of women’s previous intellectual life”. While the artwork actually has a brown cast to the dark colors, it spoke to me today in a way it hadn’t before, mirroring my feelings. I purchased it a number of years ago from a local thrift shop, framed as it is in its 1970s gold frame and brown matting. It is number 180 of 275, is undated, and is signed by Diane Vidito. The work is a lithograph and is entitled “The Fenway”
A fenway is a path through a marshy area. The word is old English, and originates from the idea that a murky, difficult area in the landscape is called a “fen”. In ancient England, filled as it was with bogs and marshes, arriving at the entry to a frightening landscape meant finding the way through was critical. Thus, the search for a fenway. Amusingly Microsoft doesn’t like the word “fenway”, thus my writing is currently covered in red squiggles of editorial warning. All of which really does feel apropos for the sense of doom and despair I have been wallowing in of late. I needed a way through a bad case of anxiety.
This work offers a glimpse of peace on the horizon. The dark tree in the middle plane, and its corresponding inky shadow most definitely put you on edge. Especially as the shadowed ground is so undefined - oily with a sense of menace. And damn it girl, you have to schlep through it. However, the rose of sunrise dawning in the sky offers a glimmer of safety. The water is clear. And the distant shore is pink! Comforting, and tinged with the color of life. Up in the far-left distance is a building. Unclear what the white mausoleum structure is meant to be – it hardly looks like a house, with its formal white pillars. But it too is bathed in a pink glow, though it is somewhat hidden behind a growth of trees. It takes more than a cursory glance to notice it.
So much of our lives are spent with cursory glances. But spending time with a piece of art, like with this painting, you can reflect parallels to your life. While the life that is burbling around you can feel overwhelming, appreciating something of beauty can offer a path through the muck. It does not need to be “official” art, or even art per se, but when you begin to build an awareness of why a piece affects you, the story you discover can be a surprise.
It was only as I was enlarging this work on my computer that I began to notice things missed over the years I’ve owned it. I got so entangled in the big scary tree, noxious oozing slime, and unattainable distant safety, I missed something critical. Take a moment and go back and look. I’ll wait.
Tucked behind the behemoth, grabby, decrepit tree is a small tree. And it is pink. There may just be a fenway ahead, to that great white house in the distance.