I had recently turned thirty when I first saw the series of paintings by Thomas Cole entitled The Voyage of Life. They arrested me from the start, capturing what had certainly been my experience of existence thus far. I was living in New York City and struggling under what seemed like a never-ending flood of setbacks on my road to career and personal success…the shining city in the clouds. I have been fully represented by the third painting for the past decade and a half, replete with the lingering sense of something watching over me, despite my militant agnosticism, with which Cole would surely have quibbled. Indeed, the fact that I see a hint of reincarnation in the overcast corners on the first and last paintings would most likely not fit with his intentions. Yet art means what it means to the viewer as much as to the creator.
The fourth painting haunts me, because another lingering feeling is that my journey may not lead me into any golden years. If so, I certainly can’t see them from here. But then we’re back at the third one, the way obscured by stormclouds and particularly menacing trees. I cannot see the way ahead, and so I do occasionally cast a glance up into the heavens, just in case. Who knows.
Yet rather than pontificate for nine hundred words today, I feel compelled to simply share the series for its own sake. What do you make of the story and its portents? I’m still not…
