Turner’s “East Cowes Castle: The Regatta Starting for their Moorings” helps me have a lot more empathy for the Lepidoptera because like them I am drawn right to the light in this piece and I can’t escape.
This painting has the most awesome and seductive light. Sitting in front of it i’m completely hypnotized and transfixed by it. Nothing else matters. I don’t have to think about anything I can just rest in this perfect luminosity. thoughts that arise can be carried off by the river or dissolve into the sun and I’m just left to rest in this perfectly illuminated spaciousness.
It first appears to be a more or less “conventional” landscape but the longer I look a more subtle structure emerges. On the left and the right the clusters of the shores and boats are in a primarily warm ochre range. The top of the sky right above the sun is a reddish band echoing these two shores. Because these are the only reddish tones in the painting they create a visual upright triangle. This red band is flanked by two pockets of cool blue sky above both shores. Because of the angles of the main sail boat on the left and the the disrant hill on the right a downward cooler triangle is implied with the peak being the suns reflection in the bottom of the canvas.
The structure of the painting is a hexagram illuminated by the sun and it’s reflection. Both the hexagram itself and the representation of the sun and its reflection on the water perfectly symbolize “As Above So Below”. This perfect balance between all hemispheres makes this an ideal piece for rest, absorption and contemplation.
