i+alia a to z :: m - but what about matisse?

twice on this adventure the lyrical colors of matisse have alluded me and my companions. first at the vatican museum when our whirlwind tour of rome made for a bypass of the modern galleries for the sake of making it to the basilica. a second time at the tate museum in liverpool's city center. we missed him by a hair. we were there on the 13th, and his constellation was set to open on the 19th, along with arrangements orbiting the works of barbara hepworth, man ray, pablo picasso, and jackson pollock.

we did, however, get to see chagall, the tate's current special exhibit, and, i guess, through him, a bit of matisse's bold palette shading soft figures. being in the world of chagall, like matisse, is like being in a dream. and i thought how much i want to skip through these color bleeding streets and meadows of shapes arm in arm with my sister.

the exhibit focused mostly on his earlier work, which is full of hope [i think] and studies of union - love, marriage, human and nature, color and form, despair and transcendence, tradition and innovation, faith and life. and i thought, this is what i and my sister, my sister and i are to each other - color and form.

where i read stories - the author's, the picture's - she reads technique - how is the painter painting? i wanted to know how she would see these paintings, what she would say about the use of color, the choices between fluidity and rigidity, or shadow and what these observations might say about the bigger picture, the story behind the practice, the artist's values.

the promenade struck me especially for its allegorical rendering of the union between earth and sky, faith and food - and the joy in finding home in this union.

we often see things differently, my sister and i, me and her, but this difference is our great gift to each other. i remember basking in the glow of raphael's school of athens at the vatican museum, contemplating the philosophical arrangements and commentary, rereading plato and aristotle in my mind's eye, the union of ideal and practice, when all of a sudden i hear her gasp when our guide turned her attention to the left hand wall [that is if you are facing into the school].

i turned as my sister's eyes twitched over the image, and she chattered excitedly: 'see how he [raphael] creates a light within the pictures? look at the light reflecting off the armor. look at the moon. can you believe he achieved this affect in eight hours?'

and in her shading of my perception, i could see more clearly how hope visits us in the darkest recesses of our hearts. she is the companion to our most difficult trials. she leads us out, a beacon in the night, in her ingenuity, using all surfaces as a resource for increasing warmth.

my sister has this kind of ingenuity. she is the best kind of companion when all is lost. she finds a way into the cell of grief and out again, because that is more difficult, getting out of grief, leaving the cave. it is more difficult because it requires doing. my sister is a doer, and i am grateful for it.

here's to hoping that she and i, i and she will someday find matisse. together.