| Art and passion for life evolve in solitude. | | | | behind her shows nothing from the outside, |
| Creativity requires alone time for the unconscious | | | | except it reflects the twin rows of ceiling lights. It |
| to digest the information life offers to humans. | | | | does not reflect anything from the interior, not |
| Yet, aloneness can lead to loneliness. William | | | | even the woman. If what the window reflects is |
| Wordsworh Longfellow wrote: And in solitude, | | | | what the painting reflects, nothingness exists in |
| alone / Hath the Beloved guided her, / In solitude | | | | the woman's isolation. |
| also wounded with love... " Stanza XXXV - St John | | | | Even when there is more than one figure in a |
| of the Cross | | | | Hopper painting, the people appear as if they are |
| Accordingly, who else but Edward Hopper can | | | | sealed away from each other. Inside "Room in |
| portray this loneliness in his art? | | | | New York," the man reads the paper, and the |
| Hopper's paintings impressed me when I was in | | | | woman--her back turned to him--touches the |
| my teens; decades later, they still do. Hopper's | | | | piano keys with one hand. They are both confined |
| stark images invade the mind and linger in it | | | | within themselves as if the other one did not |
| forever, because his brush strokes hint at a | | | | exist. An interesting point is that the central focus |
| mood of aloneness among strangers, a human | | | | in the painting is the door between them, which is |
| suffering, a mystery of sadness, and maybe, an | | | | shut. |
| unexplained secrecy. To look at a Hopper painting | | | | Perpetual aloneness suggests a deep fear of |
| is to discover some dark feeling inside oneself. | | | | rejection or desertion that causes loneliness; it is |
| Hopper's world may look different than ours, but | | | | this loneliness that penetrates Hopper's work. As |
| it is more ours than we expect. Maybe the | | | | Lord Byron wrote, But midst the crowd, the |
| scenes in the first half of the twentieth century | | | | hurry, the shock of men, / To hear, to see, to |
| did look like the way Hopper painted them. Still, | | | | feel and to possess, / And roam alone, the |
| the people in those scenes seem to be | | | | world's tired denizen, / With none who bless us, |
| disconnected, unlike that of some other painters | | | | none whom we can bless. |
| of the era. No cars are there in Hopper's empty | | | | Solitude protects the self and uplifts it to a higher |
| streets, but the aloneness of the individuals and a | | | | plane of sensitivity. People who meditate, monks, |
| feel of surreal absence filter through the viewer's | | | | artists, writers, and musicians need their aloneness |
| vision in almost every painting of his. | | | | to create. Yet, we need to free ourselves from |
| Hopper does not tell a story but paints a | | | | the negative side of solitude, the painful feelings of |
| moment, a moment that includes loneliness, | | | | loneliness. I believe that was Edward Hopper's |
| isolation, and a spell of the dark. In "Automat," a | | | | message. |
| woman sits by herself, brooding. The window | | | | |