Dad
Peter Bruun
1996, 30”x30”, oil on linen
Reckoning with a child’s mortality, and a parent’s helplessness.
She was 6 years old, and something was very wrong.
On a family ski trip in the winter of 1995, Peter’s daughter Lis was constantly thirsty and had to pee all the time. A worried call to the family pediatrician and immediate urine test delivered a dreaded diagnosis: Lis had developed Type I diabetes, a lifelong and potentially fatal disease.
Inconceivably, the shadow of mortality had fallen on Peter’s bright spark of a daughter, and he was helpless to prevent it.
After the crisis subsided, Peter returned to the studio and found himself frustrated, unable to resolve the painting he’d been working on.
One day, getting nowhere, Peter recalled an anecdote about contemporary artist Robert Moskowitz.
The story went that in a moment of desperation while working on a new painting, the artist seized a jar of Prussian Blue pigment and covered the confounding canvas with it. As he layered it on, he discovered how to resolve the painting; the result was his landmark work, The Swimmer.
Inspired, Peter coated his over-worked painting in Payne’s Gray. Beneath the semi-translucent veneer, hints of color poked through.
From there, it was just a matter of pulling out the color from within the darkness.
From there, it was just a matter of pulling out the color from within the darkness.
Vivid colors shone like a prayer answered: a painting solved, a gift of meaning for a frightened father.
That meaning:
Though shadows fall, though illusions of our children’s immortality shatter, color and life remain, twinkling as gems in a mine.
Vivid colors shone like a prayer answered: a painting solved, a gift of meaning for a frightened father.
That meaning:
Though shadows fall, though illusions of our children’s immortality shatter, color and life remain, twinkling as gems in a mine.
Gifts from the dark: grace granted.