Eyes: The Portal to Pain
Three paintings where eyes are a portal to the depth of the soul: From Ivan the Terrible to…
They say that eyes are the portal to one’s soul. This comes from an interpretation of the bible verse Matthew 6:22–24 that says, “The eye is the lamp of the body”. But, in a way, I believe that eyes are a portal to something deeper. What can be deeper than one’s soul? Well, in my secular view, the deepest of human’s “possessions” are emotions. And the more vulnerable these are, the more precious we perceive them.
What puts us in a more vulnerable spot than pain? Difficult to say. There, I search for the connection to something close to a bridge to these emotions. And no, I’m not talking of a priest, or a psychologist (though I trust the usefulness of the latter). If eyes are a portal to emotions, art is the bridge that can take us close to it — a deeper understanding — , to them.
Ivan the Terrible
Fathers…fathers. While there cannot be a definition embracing the multitude of facets and personalities that people have applied to this role, we all know how we feel — personally — about them. For better or for worse, this idea we have may be strongly linked to our idea of our own father. Now, mine was a…ok-ish, maybe-not-so-good father, and I have a very skewed idea…
