Day 21 - Trust in the Lord with all your heart

A Mi-Voix by Dorothea Tanning – 1958, oil on canvas, 1302 x 972mm, Image: ©Tate, London 2022

Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight.

Proverbs 3:5

A-mi voix was painted by Dorothea Tanning in the late-1950s, and shows a move away from her Surrealist roots toward a more subtle, intriguing, and semi-abstract style. The painting consists of blurred figures and leaves much to the interpretation of the viewer. Many see the painting as a dreamlike representation of three women around a circular table, whilst to others the subject is not quite so obvious.

At first glance, standing in Tate Modern, I saw the work as a representation of the Trinity; three, blurring into one, emerging from a central stalk, lit by multiple light-sources, created in an angular, almost Cubist, manner. Tanning herself said she wished to ‘paint a white and grey picture that would still have colour in its veins as we have blood under our winter-white skin’, and this has certainly been achieved, with the earthy-brown ground providing warmth as it glows through the monochrome top-layers.

This dichotomy of warm and cold could be said to represent peace and war, purity and sin, light and dark, or even the past and the future; the browns providing comfort and hope amid the confusing cold. In relating this painting to our current lives we may see the prismatic, broken story of COVID and the conflict in Ukraine.

We must, however, trust. We must trust that amid the confusion God is always present. The warmth is always there. We may never be able to understand this painting, we will certainly never be able to understand God’s way. God’s glory, God’s way, is so far beyond our comprehension so as to be unreachable.

It is written in Proverbs that we should trust God, fully trust Him, rather than relying on our own perception or intuition. Ours is not to understand but to trust. So as we study Tanning’s great painting, we can enjoy the prismatic style that mirrors our lives, and warm our hearts with its ethereal beauty, safe in the knowledge that the Lord warms our hearts with His comforting embrace.

Eternal Father,

In our confusing world of uncertainty, division and noise; let us find peace in Your way.

In our blurred world of overburdening information; let us find clarity in Your way.

In our hectic world favouring speed over stillness; let us find comfort in Your way.

Through the truth of Scripture, beauty of nature, and art of human creation; may we find Your answer.

Amen.

Gwyn Davies