Four White Eyes and Their Shadows Stare Back At You
What would you do? A Riddle in a Hospital
The art in the hospital deserves more attention. While heading upstairs to my family member’s room last week, I passed through a hallway connecting two ends of the building, and my peripheral vision signaled me to stop. There was a boat behind a scrub cap. There was a mountain. There were fields. Hanging on the walls facing one another, paintings and photos offered windows to other scenes for those who chose to see.
Some of these should be on the other wall, I think to myself. There is just enough room on either side of the door frame cutting into the hallway to house a piece of art, and if you were to walk the path I am on now you would be its approaching audience. You would see its whole frame. Notice what it looks like--from afar, from mid, from close--and see what it asks of you.
Instead, I see the end of the hallway leading to the elevator rising to the eighth floor where my family gathers around a bed in a room far too small for our histories.
On this day or another day, I leave the room of impossible events and start down the hallway but am again stopped in my steps. I turn to my side, and a painting stares back at me. I think it’s offering me a riddle.
If four black waves washed ashore at every corner, and four white eyes and their shadows stared back at you, what would you do in a place of petals and leaves?
Would you store your faith in the hands of another?
Would your fingers curl, hoping to create contact either here or above?
Would you offer the gift of another consciousness?
Would you caress one another?
There is one last answer that I cannot read as well. Coming from the west, two hands tucked under a white cloth rise. They are not doing it for themselves. They are reaching to meet someone, but that someone is out of reach, unpainted in the scene. The person is gone, like a ghost, and the hands follows after them, like a prayer.
Before you go…
Next time you are in a difficult situation, a hard conversation, or an impossible event, try to find the art around you. By art, I don’t mean just paintings or sculptures. I mean something that strikes a chord with you. Something beautiful or inquisitive. It could be the way three corners meet on the ceiling, the curve of two branches dropping, or the sight of a plane against the sky and the thought of all the people it carries.
If you’re curious what the painting looks like, you can see a photo of it on the website of Anne Connell, the artist. A couple of Google searches tell me the painting references something I am not very familiar with and am fairly ignorant of when looking at the art, though I had an inkling by the name of the hospital. I don’t mind. I find my interpretation just as valuable without the context.
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