My youngest son has a tube that holds around forty toy cars, and he empties it onto the floor several times a day. My husband teases me every time I put them away, only for them to be emptied again. What he doesn't know is that when I was a child, I tidied the house while my tired mother slept, a sailor's wife raising three children mostly alone, so that she would wake up to calm. Things in their place still feel like safety to me. And sometimes, when those cars clatter onto the floor, a part of me is still afraid it will wake her.
We all have our own versions of safety: a tidy corner, a low light, a closed door, a familiar sound. Some paintings hold that feeling too. They're dim, enclosed and gentle, like being tucked in. These four are worth returning to on difficult days.
Georges de La Tour, The Newborn Child (c. 1645–48, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rennes)
A swaddled baby sleeps in its mother's lap. Beside them, a second woman shields a candle with her hand, so the light falls softly on the child without waking it. Everything else is darkness. Few images show protection so tenderly: the flame, the hand, the circle of warmth.
Rembrandt, Philosopher in Meditation (1632, Musée du Louvre, Paris)
A small, golden room. An old man sits by a window in a pool of light, hands folded. A spiral staircase winds up into the shadows, and on the other side, a woman tends the fire. The darkness here isn't frightening. It's protective, like the inside of a shell.
Pieter de Hooch, The Courtyard of a House in Delft (1658, National Gallery, London)
Through a brick passage, a woman stands with a small girl in a sunlit courtyard. Another woman waits in the shade of the corridor. Scrubbed bricks, a wooden door, a quiet afternoon. It's a painting about the safety of home: ordinary, orderly and calm.
Johannes Vermeer, The Little Street (c. 1658, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
The front of an old house in Delft, two narrow doorways, a woman bent over her sewing on the threshold, children playing on the pavement. Nothing remarkable happens. That's its comfort: a street where everything is in its place, and the day goes on.
A practice for shaky days
Choose one painting, dim the lights, and look at it for a few minutes. Find the brightest point, the candle, the window, the doorway, and rest your eyes there. Breathe slowly. Let the shadows around it be a shelter rather than a threat.
A quiet place to land
If you need a gentle moment just for you, The First Letter is a short sensory meditation on receiving a letter, free to read or listen to, with a sample of my magazine, "(meditating) On Art". Something soft to hold on a hard day.
Remember to take as much time as you need, and meet me at the next one.
Love, Evi