I paid much more attention to this painting this time through the exhibit than when I saw it last semester. One thing I noticed was the sheep at Jesus' left side. I didn't focus on this sheep the first time I looked at this painting, but last week it specifically jumped out at me. The sheep appears to me to be the mother of the lamb in the Savior's arms. This made me think about whether the sheep was wondering if her baby would be safe in the master's arms, or if she knew that there is no safer place than in His arms. Can we trust our loved ones to the Savior's care?
Another painting I liked very much was Ron Richmond's “Devotion”. I didn't really appreciate this picture fully the first time I saw this painting. I didn't really grasp what it was trying to convey. The thing I really love about it though is how, no matter where you stand in the room in relation to the painting, you always feel like you're practically in the painting One reason for this is that the glass of water is painted in a much more realistic style than the rest of the painting, so looking at it, you feel that the water is real, and you are in the painting in front of the glass of water, looking at a painting in a church. Also, because of the length of the glass and the angles formed by the rim of the glass and the table, you feel like you must be very close to the glass, because if you weren't, the glass would slide right off the front of the table. The painting puts you in the position of someone actually there in the church, an active participant in worship, not a passive spectator watching someone else worship.
I'm glad I was given a chance to re-study these paintings and come to a greater appreciation of them. Art, like the gospel, is something we come to understand little by little. Just as reading the scriptures once is not enough to understand everything that can be gained from studying them, paintings rarely convey their whole message in one glance.
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