My Mother's White Whale

"White Whale" by Lou Rogers. My mother painted this when I was quite small; it's one of the images I remember best, growing up. Happily  it is still with me. I hang it again today.  My mother loved Moby Dick, and spent a good bit of time in high school limping, being Captain Ahab. All her life she pursued the numinous. The solitude in her work speaks not of loneliness but of relationship with the vast and transcendental.

Comments

[A Guest]

Your mothers white whale was moving, for me it reminded me of my heart, quiet, unmoving, and frozen with fear of moving thru my life. Yet tranquil and resting till the winter of my life can feel spring again. As always I am so moved by your work, so in awe and so wishing I was a best friend quieting sitting by your desk like the white whale pose, absorbing, learning and finding a way to express my dreams... By the way you asked of our dreams, it seems in childhood I remember none but thru adulthood I have been plagued with one. I am home alone sitting by a huge window looking out across the road a wide field that goes on forever and everything is so white, so white, and in the distant I see a figure coming across the field. I'm aware that I am alone and this person is coming to kill me, I know I have time to get away, to run but then I see the clock on the wall and know that the children will soon be home from school and I know that I must stay and the next thing I see is red, red spilling out across the white snow and I know I am gone, I will never see my babies again. I have had this dream many many times thru the years and it still bothers me . I think the white whale picture allowed me to remember that dream again. I am such a fan forest and thank you for sharing your talents with us all.

[Forest]

Thank you, Kind Visitor, for sharing this!
I wish you were here to join me this winter afternoon, too.

Yours, Forest

[Colleen]

This piece really reminds me of Kay Nielsen.
Your mother was wonderful at expressing states of being. The figure is so... heavy, and weighted, but it's a heaviness of fully letting go of fighting gravity. I don't know how to say it better. Relaxation isn't the word for it. Close- but not right. It's as if the tension has bled from every pore until there is nothing left but a complete surrender. I'm sure I am miles away from what your mother meant to convey. Forgive me for my tiring interpretation. What ever she meant, it is lovely and thought provoking.

[Montag]

Thank you for this site.
The White Whale is so obscure to me. It seems to be an intelligence alien and incomprehensible, looking at the stars and galaxies...yet somehow cut-off and possibly threatened by the spiky stalactites in the cave.
I feel fear of the unknown and sympathy.