Gothic Landscape

Lee Krasner 1908-1984 painted this oil paint on canvas, Gothic Landscape, in 1961. The thick vertical lines that dominate its centre can be seen as trees, with thick knotted roots at their base. It was probably this that led Krasner to call the painting Gothic Landscape, several years after completing it. She was married to the artist Jackson Pollock, and this was made in the years following his death from a car crash in 1956. It belongs to a series of large canvases whose violent and pressive gestural brushstrokes can be read as a reflection of her grief. Mourning for a departed loved one is to suffer a cruel robbery, a theft of one’s most precious belongings. Just as the pain of grief is found in this work’s crude strokes, so it may also be seen in the eyes and faces of spouses and parents whose beloveds have been taken. As today we mourn the death of a head of state and her family mourn the loss of a mama and granny, let us recall the promise of the Lord Jesus:

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

-John 11:25-6, New King James Version