Rockefeller Institution of Government Selected. 2022-2023
Green
30 x 40 inch
Oil on canvas
2022
Everything is simplified contour and details. You can see it at a distance or closer, trying to feel the wind out of my brushstrokes, instead of figuring out what it is. It has its own rhythm. Echoing the poem, the wild things look like rugged buildings in a lush city out of a dream. The massive green surrounding embraces wild things, also you and me. It brightens and cheers me up. It evokes a sort of simplicity from my inner soul, which is the curative power of being in nature. It could be awakened by smooth strokes, even a little naive. It sets me free for seconds. I believe that we who live in the concrete forest would love to catch and save purity and peace.
The Peace of Wild Things
by
Wendell Berry
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives might be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
From The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry (Counterpoint, 1999),
Used here with the author's permission.
