Looking Up
By C.J. Lori | September 12, 2020
It was July 31 and the highlight of our day, the evening walk. We serendipitously stumbled upon a live chamber music concert by the troupe Mistral in a local park. There in the center of the park, masked and distanced, the seven or so musicians played to an equally masked and distanced crowd. We delighted at our luck and selected a spot on the lawn. We sat and listened to the music.
Eventually, I lay down with my head on my husband’s lap and exhaled. I felt my body relax, such an unfamiliar feeling of late. Looking up, I became rapt by this view of the trees. One in particular caught my eye. Among the lush lindens, this sparse and failing tree stuck me as delicate and lyrical. I pointed it out to my husband, like the choice bit of a poem, but he didn’t react the same way. He bristles and bemoans the loss of any green growing thing. Still, it seemed to me so apt for that moment, and I remain touched by its lacy tenacity, reaching for the meagre light.
“Evening Song,” oil on canvas, 12” x 12” (2020)
Copyright © 2020 C.J. Lori
C.J. Lori is an oil painter living in Brookline, Massachusetts. Her work reflects her interest in literature, anthropology and psychology, as well as an abiding fascination with the natural world. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout New England, and in New York and Chicago, including the Danforth Museum in OFF THE WALL, and Figure, Fantasy and Illusion, Selections from the Arthur S. Goldberg Collection. She won first prize in Paint!, a national exhibition at the South Shore Arts Center. Ms. Lori is represented by 13 Forest Gallery in Arlington, Massachusetts and Array Contemporary in Boston.