Secret sources of strength

When apparent fragility is anything but

Have you ever had the experience of “hearing” a piece of art call out to you? If you have, you know what I mean.

Not that your ears discern an audible “Hey, you! Look at me!” as you walk by, but that your heart feels a tug when you glance at a piece in passing. A tug so true it’s as if a fisherman’s hook has pierced the centre of your being, and some invisible hand is reeling you in closer and closer, until you arrive near enough to see the piece in detail and, having done so, are compelled to linger.

Unable to move on, you look more closely at the artwork and start to notice finer details that you first missed: the tiny flecks of gold, the shadows, the way the artist uses light to refocus your attention to different parts of the whole. What initially struck you as a dot of gold now appears to be the late afternoon sun, off in the distance, backlighting the foreground images.

Whatever it is that draws you in, the longer you stand there, the more it speaks to you in some significant way. Gazing at it, you feel a sense of awe, of peace, and love. You feel understood. You feel somehow seen.

I am describing what happened to me when I spotted this small watercolour, titled “The Last Leaf,” in a Winnipeg gallery several weeks ago.

“The Last Leaf” by Kristina Zabawa Ryan.

We’d gone to the gallery with friends who were visiting from out of town. We’d spent the day exploring and enjoying local attractions, and this was just one more stop on our day’s itinerary.

When I first caught a glimpse of “The Last Leaf,” I allowed Doug and our friends to walk on past. For a few minutes, I didn’t want to look at anything else.

The beauty of the solo autumn leaf—long deprived of any chlorophyll, backlit by the winter sun, edged in pointed ice crystals yet still hanging on, refusing to let go and drop to the forest floor or allow itself to be blown away by fall winds or winter storms—spoke to me of strength, resilience, and tenacity. What at first appears vulnerable, delicate, and fragile—the leaf shines golden and slightly translucent—is, in reality, anything but. That single leaf, hanging on despite everything it has endured and continues to endure, hints at some secret source of power, determination, and grit.

In those minutes, I sensed that if I could only look at this little leaf periodically, it might help me to be strong, to have courage, to endure through whatever trials may come.

On our way out of the gallery, I enquired and was told I could indeed purchase the watercolour by Manitoba artist Kristina Zabawa Ryan. But doing so felt impulsive and a little self-indulgent, so I decided to think about it for a few days.

I couldn’t get the painting out of my mind. Within two weeks, I was back to make the purchase, and then took “The Last Leaf” to a local picture framing shop to have it reframed. (While we kept the dark mat the artist had chosen, the original plain white wooden frame didn’t seem to do it justice.)

Doug and I picked up our new piece of art last week; we were thrilled with how it looks in its new frame. It now hangs on our dining room wall. Once hung there, Doug looked at it with emotion in his face and said, “I love it.”

I love it too. I look at it every day; I’m looking at it as I type these words. It reminds me that like that little leaf, I, too, have a secret source of strength—my faith in a loving God who can be trusted to be with me even in the worst of times.

It feels like Ms. Ryan was somehow meant to paint it just for me.

“Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet … all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece. It is important to recognize the distinction, but also the connection, between these two aspects of human activity.”

– Pope John Paul II, Letter to Artists, 1999.

Postscript: I sent this post—together with the quotation from Pope John Paul II—to Ms. Ryan via email, thanking her for creating the beautiful piece. I wanted her to know what it means to me and how it reminds me to be strong. She told me she based the painting on a photo her daughter had taken while strolling her property in rural Manitoba. “I really loved this little leaf,” she wrote, “and with her permission, painted it.”

And then she told me something else: she met Pope John Paul II when he was still known as Cardinal Karol Wojtyła. She was 12 years old when the future pope came to her church in Poland in 1966 and blessed the church and each of the children.