I fell in love with this painting a few years ago when I saw it at the Oakland Museum. It's called "Autumn Journey," by the California painter Ralph Borge, who died in 2008. An elderly woman, wearing her best cloth coat and her Sunday hat, sits alone in a rowboat, becalmed on the surface of a reflective sky. The autumn leaves have begun to fall; a few have drifted into the boat. Lost in thought, she gazes at something beyond the frame of the painting. What could she be thinking, as she prepares to take the first oar stroke? Or perhaps the journey is over, and she has just arrived.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
An autumn journey
I fell in love with this painting a few years ago when I saw it at the Oakland Museum. It's called "Autumn Journey," by the California painter Ralph Borge, who died in 2008. An elderly woman, wearing her best cloth coat and her Sunday hat, sits alone in a rowboat, becalmed on the surface of a reflective sky. The autumn leaves have begun to fall; a few have drifted into the boat. Lost in thought, she gazes at something beyond the frame of the painting. What could she be thinking, as she prepares to take the first oar stroke? Or perhaps the journey is over, and she has just arrived.
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2 comments:
It makes me think of the Anne Sexton series, The Awful Rowing Toward God.
What a beautiful and devastating title. You have to wonder if Borge had it in mind when he composed this painting, no?
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