(Click on the image to see it larger)
The Sisters, ©John O’Grady
60 cm x 60 cm x 4 cm (23.6″ x 23.6″ x 1.6″), acrylic on deep edge canvas, ready to hang.
$1400 (approx £1070, €1189) with free shipping.
It’s midnight on the longest day of the year in the garden.
Among flowers in full bloom, mulleins, the yellow beacons, point skyward to the stars.
The perfume of jasmine mingle with other scents and lingers in the warm summer night. The milky way above the tower lights this moment…
This painting comes from a dream fed with memories brought to life into a colourful enchanted garden.
Two women look on across towards a distant figure…
I don’t know what the painting reveals for you, the viewer nor what it reveals for me, or if we even need to know but the mark making across the surface of sky and land spoke to me of how everything is transient, how we can appreciate the beauty of what lives and how ultimately we are interrelated to all that is around us.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
― Carl Sagan
I find this Sagan quote so moving. The thoughts and ideas that he brings forth exploded in my brain, opening up the idea of wonderful cosmic possibilities.
The patterns and shapes of flowers in the garden are like the energy of stars bursting forth with light, millions of miles away.
We are not only spectators but also active participants in this spiritual performance.
Is it a dream? Is it reality?
Or is it like life, moving and shifting?
What about you, what are your feelings about this painting?
Hello John, I went to bed last night with thoughts of ‘The Sisters’ floating through my mind. It brought a particular personal memory to my mind which returned this morning! However, the memory and the painting have very different elements to it – ‘like life moving and shifting’. What is shows to me, as it has in many of your paintings before, is that such an emotive piece can be very powerful and interact with us in very individual ways. There is a magical quality to it: midsummer night, the perfume of a garden at night, the glow of the flowers and the beauty of nature are all captured in a very sensuous way. The colours and the way they are combined so creatively paints a dream or fantasy world under that magnificent sky. Many congratulations!
Thank you Chris for your thoughtful comment on the painting, it’s lovely to hear that the painting was floating through your mind as you went to bed and that it evoked a particular memory for yo, which returned in the morning. I couldn’t ask for more than that
Chris Hay has already expressed my response to this painting so eloquently. The universe is in a continuous state of coming into being and vanishing. The palette, especially the complementary blues and yellows, intensify the already heightened emotional tone of the piece. The flowers, the stars, the figures limned in light against the deep blue (so lovely), with the sensitive use of green, red, and white, create a visionary, even archetypal dreamscape — or perhaps a scene that would wash over one in an altered state, with all the channels of the mind wide open. This has a very particular resonance for me, John, as I’m sure it does for anyone who really sees it. And, as you wrote, perhaps we don’t even need to know what it reveals to us. The greatest art touches us at a level beyond literal understanding. Thank you for creating it and for sharing this profound and ecstatic vision with us.
Hello Jo, yes I think we’re both in agreement with the ‘ not needing to know what it reveals to us’ I think that is part of the magic. Thank you for your poetic reading of the painting. I can add nothing further to what you’ve written.