Sunday, February 04, 2024
Sunday Reflection: Realer than Real
My Dad once told me that when he painted something, he wanted it to be "realer than real." Confused, I asked him to explain that, and I think he kind of mumbled and waved his hands around for a while-- sometimes, I think, you were just supposed to get it without a lot of explaining.
I thought about it for a long time.
In the end, I think what he meant was that he wanted to express a deeper truth than was in the facial image, that he wanted to kind of add a dimension-- an emotional one-- to the two dimensions (kind of three, I guess) that he had to work with. And he was really good at that. Sometimes I would look at what he painted and then at the original source material and it just wasn't the same-- it was better. In the landscape above, he has kind of fuzzed out the fine details of the road and field. The trees are literally pointing to what is true and beautiful and good (and, in contrast to the things on the ground, painted with detail)-- the blue sky and the clouds, which are both ephemeral and eternal.
I think that is why Jesus used parables rather than true stories. It let him make the story truer than true, to go after that something deeper....
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Politicians attempt this all the time. And often, they are effective, sometimes to disastrous effect.
If you're up for reading something a little different, this year's Newbery-winner, "The Eyes & The Impossible," is about a dog discovering art. He describes it just like this.
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