Fragments of Light

The Artist Responding to Beauty, Part Four

<em>Et gloriam vidi resurgentis</em>, Alfred Manessier, 1961.
Et gloriam vidi resurgentis, Alfred Manessier, 1961.

For me, painting is a continual patient advance, a stripping down, with absolute faith that in the end a miracle will occur.
—Alfred Manessier, quoted in Manessier, J.P. Hoden.

Speaking of his despair after experiencing the war years in his native France (1940-45), the painter, Manessier said, “I clearly perceived . . . how essential it was to widen one’s love rather than to continue to tear oneself to pieces . . . ” Is this insight into a painter’s process and inner journey not like our path through the tridium, as we travel through the three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Holy Saturday’s Easter Vigil?
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