The Circles of Rembrandt

 


If you're strolling through Wolfville on a winter's day you may not expect to meet up with "The Dutchman" - that is unless you wander into Lynda Macdonald's Harvest Gallery.www.harvestgallery.ca

http://stevenrhude.wix.com/artist-painter Artists are often called upon by the contemporary establishment (AKA as the judge and jury) to explain their work, or at times a specific painting. As though an explanation will unlock some code we have recently stumbled upon but lack the means or where with all to decipher. The Dutchman (Rembrandt) succeeded in spawning a lot of conjecture regarding the nature of the "circle" not only in his Kenwood self portrait, but in the frame work of western painting. He had no idea that eventually he would become a noun or even an image - but this is none the less the case today. Let us not be led astray by this objective.

However, it may be that the mystical properties of the circle evident in Rembrandt's work of self reference, had more to do with the way we ought to reestablish a relationship with an organic living body that is constantly in flux and changing through the lens of the human eye as we speak.
"If we want to actually start noticing where we are, if we wish to find ourselves in a more respectful relation with the rest of the earth around us, the simplest and most elegant way I know of is simply to stop insulting all the things around us by speaking of them as passive objects, and instead begin to allow things their own elemental spontaneity, their own active agency -- their own life. - D. Abram
http://www.wildethics.com/ess…/interview_derrick_jensen.html

Steven Rhude, Wolfville, NS