I went to WTM’s house yesterday, and as usual felt like a better person just for having talked with him. He also shared some wonderful music, writing, and images with me, as he invariably does.
Above is Menorah (1993), by Roger Wagner, a contemporary religious painter about whom you can read in this article in Image. It’s an excellent discussion of this work, and of the context of suffering, history, redemption, and modernism in it.
WTM was particularly affected by the stunning piece below, called The Harvest is the End of the World and the Reapers are Angels (1989):
“And in that summer evening’s fading light
I saw his angels gather in the wheat:
Like beaten gold their beauty smote the air
And tongues of flame were streaming in their hair.”
(As I’ve mentioned before, I find there are some wonderful religious artists. A metaphysical system is not useful to an artist based on its rational accuracy, and the poetry and entrenched iconography of religious art can be extremely moving in the credential context of the believing painter).
