When I was a younger man, and an art student, I spent a great deal of time at the many museums of the city, learning from the artists of the past. When our studies turned to landscapes I often found myself at a singular museum known for its collection of work that spanned a thousand years.
I do not know when I first became aware of the old man, likely he had been sitting there long before I started visiting. But as I found myself more and more often in a particular gallery I noticed that he was always there, always sitting in the same spot on the large bench in the middle of the room, always gazing at the same painting.
There was nothing especially remarkable about the painting itself as far as I could see. It depicted a meadow somewhere in Europe (it was a gallery of European landscapes.) On one side the meadow was bordered by mountains in the middle distance on the other side could be seen a small sliver of the sea. But something about the painting fascinated the elderly gentleman. Always I would see him sitting there when I entered the gallery to sketch bits and pieces of the work of the giants that had gone before me, and always he would still be sitting there when I left.
I would often stroll into the gallery long after I had any academic reason to do so just to see if he was still there, he always was.
Finally there came a day when he and I were the only two patrons in the large room. My curiosity finally had the better of me and I sat down next to the old man and introduced myself. He nodded politely and gave me his name and shook my hand and then returned to studying his painting.
“I am sorry if this is prying,” I finally ventured, “but may I ask what is so special about this painting that holds your attention day after day?”
His answer was very quiet, “I knew this place ,” he said.
And that might have been all he said on the matter had I not posed one more question. “I see,” I said assuming an air of understanding I did not actually have, “Does it make you homesick?”
He smiled slightly as he exhaled and looked down at the floor for a moment. Then he raised his his eyes back to the painting “I suppose it does, but not in the way you think. I lived near this meadow as a boy. I must have walked past it a couple of times a day nearly every day, to and from school, or down to the village and back to a neighbor or on some errand for my mother. I have seen this meadow in the stark cold light of Fall and Winter and in the joyfully exuberant light of spring and summer. I have seen the sun’s first rays streak in from the sea dusting the tops of the grass and trees with golden fire, and I have seen the shadows of the mountains cloak it in a covering of purple and red. I have seen the light sparkle off the rising morning mist and I have seen the sun struggle to shed its light through the clouds of storms. I have seen this meadow at every time of the day and season of the year, but I have never seen it like this.”
“You see,” he continued, “that is the genius and the gift of the artist. To take the things that are so familiar to us that we have stopped seeing them, and show them again to us in a different way, to reawaken in us the sense of the beauty that is in the most common of things. That is what he has done here, taken a meadow I have seen in every light imaginable and shown it to me bathed in the light of God. Yes, it makes me homesick, not for the meadow, but for our home in Heaven toward which we all journey.”
Art students like to joke that the best thing about taking a class in art history is that you never have to take it again. That may be true because while I have forgotten many of the names and dates one is expected to memorize in school, I have never forgotten what the old man taught me that day. I learned from him more about the role of the artist, his burden, and his task, than I did in all my years of study.
One of the greatest gifts artists of all types have to offer is the ability to make us see the ordinary in an extraordinary way; to see the most common of things bathed in the light of God. It is a reminder of the greatest of artists, He who came to make all things new.
I think often these days of the old man, as I myself slowly become one. Most likely he has long since gone to glory, but I expect I will see him again one day, when we have all come home.