Mar. 19, 2005 - 23:42 MST

THE WONDERING JEW

An Eerie World

I saw a picture this evening, it almost looked like a photograph. But it was of a scene of impossiblity. Envision a square patio paved in square tiles, surrounded by a fence in the foreground. Two men standing on it, one man supporting a ladder and the other guiding something being hoisted by a rope. The opposite corner of the patio is above those two men and one man above is pulling up the rope and another man is almost at the top of the ladder.

The heck of it that the perspective looks right, the scene looks right but the picture is of unreality.

I went to my bookshelves and picked out an M. C. Escher book of his pictures and proceeded to leaf through it once again visiting people and things I have favored all this time.

One peculiarity of mine when I am going through his pictures it the theme from "Outer Limits," softly playing in my mind. And his limits were truly outer.

His early art was so very realistic, but in later years he developed his "division of the plane," in so many intriguing ways. Still his picture "Hell" in the style of Hieronymous Bosch is as if he were having a nightmare perhaps.

His picture, "Puddle," is so life like, a muddy road with tire tracks in it, also foot prints, taking up a good part of the picture is a puddle in the road. But in that puddle is a reflection of tall trees. The first time I saw it, my breath caught, I could be there and see that very thing. He saw what others didn't I think.

His "Up And Down" is a picture that almost defies description, featuring four staircases, with people on them, showing a view both from above and up from below simultaneously and drawn so well that my mind strives to accept it as reality.

"Drawing Hands," a lithograph of two hands drawing each other, very real looking hands, both right hands and the texture of the skin so good. Then there is a mezzotint of his "Dewdrop" a drop of water on a leaf that one could be sure that to touch the dewdrop would bring a wet finger away.

Then some of his pictures are much like Tolouse Lautrec on Crack Cocaine, strange creatures made realistic, strange structural impossibilities.

Makes my mind expand a bit just looking and thinking. Thinking about how much I missed going through life. His artwork of the Alhambra, and some of the areas he traveled I think is probably better than photographs as he saw what was actually there rather than the mere reflections of light from varied surfaces.

So, for a bit more I shall go on looking in my M. C. Escher book and his very vivid drawings and walk in An Eerie World . . . . . . .

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