…I saw a stained glass window

“The eye is the best of all artists.”

It is no secret that I appreciate the visual arts; both as a creator and beholder; and readers of this site may also be aware that I am favourably inclined toward the work of David Hockney.

“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window with which the Gothic cathedrals are adorned in the colours of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”

~ Emerson, History

Hockney’s “Yorkshire Wolds”

When I first contemplated “Yorkshire Wolds,” I distinguished a stained glass window; to me, the parallels between this work of art and an additional art form are palpable. So they were for Emerson. That is to say, these assuredly would have existed were he to have viewed the painting today. It begs the question of what Hockney contemplated in a winter sky whose continuity was fractured by barren trees, or whether he predicted the observer to glimpse the same in the scene; conceivably, did he envisage that two divergent people existing in two different generations would discern the same…image?  And, for that matter, how many countless others?

“The roots of all things are in man. It is in the soul that architecture exists.”  ~ History

In excavating ever more deeply, we reach the true awareness that the roots of all things exist in nature; and that man’s experiences and consciousness of nature manifest into art; in this manner, the foundations of things are in man; however, he must accept merely a secondary office in this chain of being.

To wit: “The trivial experience of every day is always verifying some old prediction to us, and converting into things the words and signs which we have heard and seen without heed.” ~ History