July 20, 2008

a craving for simplicity

edward hopper, late in his life, said this beautiful thing: "All I want to do is paint sunlight on the side of a house." And then he painted this:

and i revel in it. i've been thinking a lot lately about what is my sunlight on the side of a house. he spent his entire life documenting the melancholic, or sometimes bucolic (yes, those lovely seascapes of his) and at the end of the day he was satisfied with the infinite beauty of light playing off of an unremarkable siding. there is such poetry in that view--i love it.

2 comments:

pandabeard said...

i love the quote.

it's not always the beauty of an object that makes it memorable, but the way sunlight touches it.

lia said...

for some reason this painting just feels so much like you. and i think i have been thinking those same things lately, though perhaps not in quite those words. so amy dear, what is your sunlight on the side of a house?