The title comes from the poem, “Most Sweet It Is”, in which Wordsworth extols how
“the mind’s internal heaven”, or human imagination and love, can find beauty and
inspiration in even the humblest aspects of nature.
There is no wrong reason to love a painting. Beauty is perhaps a cheap commodity
now, but our craving to capture and be captured by it has not changed. Beauty in a
painting can still trap and clasp a beating, anxious heart in two warm hands.
A hare leaps forth into darkness, eternally in flight, framed by softly illuminated
protea blossoms. Its ears catch the setting sun like flags.
Our naive desire for love will always find soft hooks upon which to hang its offerings.
Any bit of prettiness will do. Longing is always accompanied by fearfulness, and we
are constantly on the run. But perhaps here, undisrupted by meaning, hovering on
the brink of the illusion, we can feel that tender pain which we run from, that fearful
joy we chase.