The Light Arrives

At this time of the year the light at latitude 53 arrives to pool in surprising places in the house. It’s low and dramatic and even a bit sneaky. It can be brief and angular, golden and strong. If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen some of my recent shots of downtown Edmonton. Getting out early in the morning on a Saturday for a photo walk has been good for my mental health and sometimes I even like the results. The light on the side of the A. MacDonald Building led me to these lines:

“There is a sort of elation about sunlight on the upper part of a house.” – Edward Hopper

Relatedly, "Maybe I am not very human – what I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house. ” – Edward Hopper

And this in turn led me to: “Sun in an Empty Room” by The Weakerthans:

Sun in and Empty Room 1963, Edward Hopper

There’s no shortage of poetry written about Hopper paintings. It’s almost a sub-genre of ekphrasis.

Here’s one by Hernán Bravo Varela that begins:

In Edward Hopper’s final painting
there’s an empty room.

Except for two walls, drenched by an invisible
sun that peeks through a
window that suggests the blurry foliage
of a blurrier tree.

The two walls share
a shadowed corner.

In the painting,
people will be here any minute now. They’re on the verge
of slipping envelopes
under the door, of jangling
their keys inside
their pockets,
of moving boxes in
or moving out for good.

One moment to the next.

Later in the poem:

Like Hopper.
When asked what he was looking for
by painting it, he said, “I’m looking for myself.”

I haven’t posed a writing prompt for eons, but how about this: write about the light in a painting, by Hopper, or any other artist. How does the light arrive? Do you find yourself in that light? Where does the light take you?

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Ps. Just a wee reminder that my publisher, Palimpsest Press has a sale going on now!