About a Painting

The lilies in this oil painting seem to breathe from their floral lungs and reach up at the sun (unseen in the work) lighting up the scene. The creek bubbles here and trickles there so that you might think you could hear it, and at any moment the frozen scene might resume its movement from the momentary pause. What you really feel when you ponder this painting longer is its loneliness. The stone cottage in the background and the less-defined figure of a solitary man in the doorway give an eerie sense of isolation. Maybe it is the way his un-detailed face is looking right at you. He appears like a statue, frozen in place so that you might not notice him there. It looks as though he prefers isolation, and your presence as an observer causes him to go rigid with discomfort, and peer at you with unblinking small eyes in a wrinkled face, to make sure you don’t come any closer and disturb him in his peaceful abode.