Bruce Herman-QU4RTETS: The four seasons of life
These four paintings, painted by Bruce Herman as part of the QU4RTETS project to illuminate T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, have many layers of meaning and nuance and are meant to be viewed in conjunction with the entire project. However, they also stand alone as a profound visual meditation on the seasons of life.
QU4RTETS No.1 (Spring)
oil and gold/silver leaf on wood
97” x 60”
Spring/Earth/Childhood
The first painting, Childhood, is bubbling with green and gold. The composition shoots upward, drawing the viewer’s eye to the young boy who stares right back. This painting has the most clearly defined light source, which filters through the branches as a series of squares. The boy’s expression is ambiguous. Is he frightened as he rides the crest of growth exploding upward from the earth? Has some experience on the ground prompted him to ascend from the earth? Or is he simply enjoying the audacious curiosity afforded by youth and his ability to survey the world from a height?
QU4RTETS No.2 (Summer)
oil and gold/silver leaf on wood
97” x 60”
Summer/Fire/Youth
In the next painting, Youth, a young and attractive woman stands with arms outstretched, seeming to bask in the heat radiating from the bonfire of a tree before her. The composition is a riot of reds, oranges, and golds that seem to flicker upward like sparks. The woman has no interest in what is going on outside of the canvas; she is wholly transfixed by the energy before her. This painting contains all the zest and passion of youthful vision. Her intensity mirrors the single-minded optimism and focus of one set on making their way in the world. A grid, barely visible, emerges from between the twisting branches. At this stage of life the grid, the underlying logic of experience, is obscured by the chaos of possibilities. Before the woman is the element of fire which has risen from the earth and is waiting for her to shape and be shaped by it.
QU4RTETS No.3 (Autumn)
oil and gold/silver leaf on wood
97” x 60”
Autumn/Water/Adulthood
In Adulthood, a woman stands waist deep in water beneath a tree shedding its leaves. Her shirt mirrors the ripples. Her posture is slightly bent under the weight of life and the whole composition presses down and flows outward through the ripples. The woman has turned from her all-consuming focus of the tree and is looking outward with a somber expression. No longer a riot of possibilities, the tree has solidified into a definitive form, a form which seems to be dying as its leaves drift away from her on the ripples made by her presence. The brown of dead branches only appears where the silver grid has descended, as if her increasing understanding is putting to death every false thing in which she has located her hopes and dreams. Or perhaps it is a veil being slowly removed. In many ways this painting feels more somber than the following Old Age. An awareness of her own fleetingness and inability to control life has tempered the naïve optimisms of youth.
QU4RTETS No.4 (Winter)
oil and silver/moon-gold leaf on wood
97” x 60”
Winter/Air/Old Age
Beneath the seemingly bleak and monochromatic surface, a quiet but powerful undercurrent of hope and peace fills the painting called Old Age. An old man with a silvery halo gazes contemplatively at the viewer. Behind him, a full-grown tree is visible through a silver veil-like grid. The old man’s gray hairs are his “crown of glory” (Proverbs 16:31) and they are depicted here as an etherial and wispy halo. The halo is a traditional art symbol of those who are holy or righteous. He stands as a sage or prophet beneath the tree and seems to be ready to answer any question. The tree is full grown and its trunk reaches higher than the trees in the other three paintings. It is a tree that has been “planted by streams of water.” (Psalm 1:3) The grid in this painting is complete, suggesting that the old man is beginning to see something of the structure of his life and the world. Discovering one’s self is not something that can be accomplished with an internet questionnaire. It is only when one has reached the end of their life and can look back at all the decisions, events, and places that constituted their existence that they can begin to know what kind of person they were. Perhaps this man is looking forward to the even greater day when we will “know fully, just as he is fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Bruce Herman’s paintings, like T.S. Eliot’s poetry, are made up of symbolism, nuance, experience, and allusion. They have many readings other than what I have arrived at and presented here. Like all great paintings, however, their ambiguity arises not from muddled or unclear meaning, but rather layers of suggestive and conceptually connected meanings.
For more on the QU4RTETS project check out this video: