Art and Emotions - The Prodigal Son

I have rarely related my blog post to the graphic that I am using that day.   However, this particular graphic is a bit different.  Sometimes my expression in art is a reflection of how I am feeling when it is created.   Other times, like this one, it is the reverse.  

When I completed this graphic, it was not because I was feeling bright, shiny, or particularly positive.   Yet, looking at it caused me to become just that.   Something resonates with me when I see it.   Sadly, few of my creations do this.   But occasionally, they do.

Other works of art resonate with me as well.

Whenever I look at Rembrandt’s painting: The Prodigal Son, I get a wash of emotions from it.   If you have never seen it, look it up.   The father is putting his hands around his lost son, while the other sons, some distance off, have looks from disgust to joy at his return.  

It is profound it that it brings me to the point of joy when I look at it from the father's perspective.  Some deep seated wish has finally been granted, a lost connection reestablished, a family put back together.   Also, when I put myself  in the role of the son, I feel like hope has come again, forgiveness.   Just imagine being so lost, alone, full of shame that you would be willing to be a slave to your family just to have a place to call home.   Yet, in that moment of not even being able to hope for the least crumb from the table, you get the feast.   All is forgiven and you have found that you are home.  From the perspective of the other brothers that stayed home; one is angry because of the perceived injustice, another might be confused at his father's actions.  I have had the same thoughts, the same anger and the same confusion.   I have felt at the wrong end of justice, and deeply confused by the actions of others.  

However, let me have someone else tell you their reaction to this work of art:

When the famous author Henri Nouwen saw the Prodigal Son painting in the St Petersburg Hermitage, he was struck  by the sight of  "a man in a great red cloak tenderly touching the shoulders of a disheveled boy kneeling before him.  I could not take my eyes away.  I felt drawn by the intimacy between the two figures, the warm red of the man’s cloak, the golden yellow of the boy’s tunic, and the mysterious light engulfing them both.  But, most of all, it was the hands --the old man’s hands--as they touched the boy’s shoulders that reached me in a place where I had never been reached before.  ..."  Nouwen realized that Rembrandt must have shed many tears and died many deaths before he could have so exquisitely painted the father’s heart for his lost son.  Rembrandt  had once again painted himself as the Prodigal Son, but this time coming back home to his Father.  - Reverend Ed Hird