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Let Art Restore Your Faith In Humanity
Art captures universal truths that remind us we are all in the same human predicament
I have a postcard of this image tacked to my study wall. ‘Pennsylvania coal town’ by Edward Hopper. Whenever I stop my work and look up at this painting, I can’t help but feel that Hopper painted something I recognize. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I recognize it anyway. He got it right, which is a rather vague way of saying that he found something which is essentially true about being alive.
Whatever this truth is, it has nothing especially to do with coal mining in Pennsylvania, not for me at least. That’s not the world I live in. It does have something to do with a man raking his front lawn and the sun beginning to set, and with the way he pauses for a second, looking out to the distance. It is a truth captured in the particular spacing between the two houses, whose fronts are in shadow and whose sides are bathed in the yellow light of late afternoon.
It is an instant of human behavior we must all identify with, in ourselves and in others too. Who has not paused once in a while like this, and in the moment apprehended something about their lives that words cannot quite express? When a new thought ignites, a soft flame of understanding lights the way ahead. It is about looking…
