Carle Hessay 1973 From Here to Eternity

Carle Hessay: From Here to Eternity

"Immediately following his repatriation to Canada at the close of World War II, Carle came out to the Pacific Coast and took up residence on Passage Island in the Straits of Georgia, and there pursued the quiet life of a fisherman. The choice of the quiet and peace that island living afforded in those days must have acted as a balm to his spirit and no doubt enable him to come to terms with the great distortion of the human values that had overwhelmed his life. From Here to Eternity can be seen as a commentary on those years, made from the vantage point that time and space had given, but with a surprising power of emotion.

Like the setting of Earnest Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River," this work is full of dynamic polarities. ...Burnt and blackened ruins, burnt crosses, and skull-like boulders dominate the foreground to create a churning motion that emphasizes, by contrast, the serenity of the pyramidic forms of the mountains at the skyline. It is an equation of heaven and hell in simultaneous expression." From Leonard A. Woods, Meditations of the Paintings of Carle Hessay (Trabarni, 2005).

(1205 x 588 mm, 48 x 24 inches; on masonite board)