![]() ![]() Acts 2:2 describes the sound of his descent as “like a mighty rushing wind.” Full of elemental movement, Wyeth’s Pentecost plays upon scripture’s characterization of God’s Spirit as wind, breath, pneuma, visualizing this invisible energy through the animating effect it has on a pair of seining nets. ![]() The Christian liturgical feast of Pentecost celebrates the historic outpouring of God’s Spirit on the church. She said the island was originally called Pentecost Island, a name bestowed by the English explorer George Weymouth upon his first landfall in the New World on Pentecost Sunday, 1605. The painting’s title likely originated with Betsy, who titled most of Wyeth’s works, with his consent. Pentecost was painted on Allen Island, a former fishing outpost about five miles off the coast of Maine that Wyeth’s wife, Betsy, purchased in 1979. ![]() ![]() But surely the title invites associations with the divine as well. Wyeth said the spirit he sensed in the nets was that of a young girl who had drowned at sea. There’s a spiritual presence in Andrew Wyeth’s Pentecost painting, which shows two tattered fishing nets hanging out to dry on a gray New England day, billowing in the wind like sails. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |