Owner of a Lonely Heart

For a few months here in Nashville there is an exhibition running at the Frist Museum of Art focusing on Rembrandt and the Dutch Masters. Seeing the promos took me back to a time in childhood after my Mom annoyed my Dad by purchasing a set of Childcraft Encyclopedias from a door to door salesman. I’m sure this purchase wasn’t in the budget on my Dad’s Wonder Bread-man salary, but she stepped out and purchased them anyway. With a growing tribe of kids my Mom thought we needed some good books to stimulate our minds (and maybe occupy our time?) I devoured them. I had allergies to most everything outdoors, and so was not as athletic as the rest. I read those things like they were red meat thrown to a hungry lion cub. Volume 10 (I think) was the one on art and artists. It had a lot of beautiful color plates of all the famous masterworks through the ages, and some of my earliest sense memories are of the feelings that those paintings evoked in me. I particularly remember some of the Dutch painters (Vermeer’s and De Hooch’s) interior paintings, the ones with people, usually women, just inside a window. The blood black and white tile floors and the light all cool and eerie and this sense of QUIET just pervading the rooms was captivating. As the oldest of seven, I had no idea what a quiet space felt like, and usually had to tune out the wild chaos of rambunctious children around me to study the books. But those scenes were transfixing to me. They gave me feelings of sadness and loneliness and peace, just like the plaintive whistling theme song of the Lassie TV show sometimes made me cry. I’ve known that one of the HeART pieces will be “Owner of a Lonely Heart” – prompted by the YES song from the 80’s. But I’d been pondering how to portray it, and now I know it will be a realistic but Dali-ish rendition of one of those Dutch women in her quiet room. But instead of tending to her writing or pouring water she will be caring for her lonely heart.