Deity, 1989, painting by Fred Hatt
This Sunday is the Summer Solstice, in the Northern hemisphere the longest day (and shortest night) of the year. It’s one of the primary holy days in all the pagan traditions of the North, celebrated by bonfires and revelry. Shakespeare’s magical comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream captures something of the spirit this season carried in an era less demystified than our own. Check this link for Arthur Rackham’s gorgeous, bristling illustrations of the play.
In honor of this time, here is a painting I made twenty years ago. In a videotaped interview made at an exhibition where this painting was included, I described it as “an embodiment of creative force. One arm is flowing like water, and the other arm is putting out roots like a tree, there’s the head in flames, and the second head, a baby’s head, is emerging down below. The whole thing is in a ball of fire, which is held in a big blue hand, suggesting that even the god you can conceive is contained within something bigger yet.”
Deity (detail), 1989, painting by Fred Hatt
It’s a celebration of the Sun, the ultimate source of energy for us on Earth, that makes the water flow and causes plants and animals to emerge from raw matter. Sun the illuminator, the invigorator, gentle warmer and harsh scorcher, source of all yet an insignificant one among billions of stars.
The original painting is acrylic and mixed media on paper, 38″ x 50″ (96.5 x 127 cm).
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Nicely done, Fred. Our day, up here on top of the world, will be just about 22 hours (twix sunrise and sunset) on the solstice.
That sounds beautiful, Jim. The Russians call the long summer nights “white nights”. But does it mean that around the winter solstice the day is only 2 hours long?
A bit longer, Fred. Has something to do with the arc of the sky covered by the movement of the winter sun & the summer sun. Also there’s quite a bit of twilight giving us something over 5 hours of daylight, if not sunlight.
Twilight and early morning/late afternoon are my favorite kinds of daylight anyway. Any photographer will tell you, midday is the worst.
Uh huh, golden hour, the sun at an altitude of around ten degrees. National Geographic tended to be quite rigid about this, with the photographs they used.
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