The Burning Canvas

The painting looks like it’s burning. The harsh reds and oranges of the leaves painted in quick upward strokes. The cool blues and greens of the shaded grass that surround the trunk.

It’s aggressive. And I can’t stop looking at it.

I found the image of The Pear Tree by Pierre Auguste Renoir by accident. I was in the middle of a mindless search binge and came across it. It’s been three weeks and I still have the image pulled up in a browser tab. Every once in a while I click over to it, wondering if it will lose some of its power over me. And every time it pulls me back in. The colors just as vibrant, the feeling of it like a gut punch.

I’ve seen Renoir’s work before, but I’ve never seen this piece. This picture feels alive. There’s so much movement, so much contrast. Just like Renoir.

I wonder how he felt painting it. Not just what he was feeling internally that inspired the image, but how he physically felt. Was this before his rheumatoid arthritis? Or did his hands ache as he built the layers of paint? Did his joints burn? Was the pain sharp? Did it feel hot like the colors on the canvas? Or was this painting created out of some other feeling? Something emotional? Maybe it was just boredom.

I glance around my home, covered in my own paintings and drawings. They hang from my walls, line my mantel, and sit upon my bookshelves. What would it feel like for my body to revolt? For my joints to scream in pain every time I picked up a brush?

My dad has arthritis. He says some days it’s too painful for him to sleep with a sheet touching his skin. Is this in my future? How would I handle this debilitation? Would my passion wither away? Or would I persist like Renoir?

Renoir painted his entire life. He never let his diagnosis stop him from doing exactly what he loved. I open a new tab and read more about Renoir’s struggle with arthritis. A newspaper article about the artist’s life talks about a wicker cage he slept in. His arthritis was so bad, he would place himself in a sort of cage so that he wouldn’t be able to move around and wake himself up due to the pain. The article actually says he would “howl.”

I click back to the image of the pear tree. It looks a bit like a howl. Like a violent scream ripped from the cool, damp floor of a meadow. It haunts me.

I need it.

I think about painting it. Would I be able to replicate this image? Paint it across a wall? Immediately I know I wouldn’t be able to. I wouldn’t be able to capture the emotion, the movement, the detail. I can paint but I’m no Renoir. Then again, who is?

I imagine a mural of this hung in my house. The image like flames licking up the wall. What emotion would this draw from me every day as I passed by it? I’m not sure. I can’t figure out what emotion it draws from me now.

Does it inspire me? Make me quake with imposter’s syndrome, that I’ll never be able to create something like this? Why does this particular image haunt my thoughts all day? It’s not even one of his famous pieces. It’s not even a large painting. If this was hung in a home, in its original size it wouldn’t even be a statement piece. People would walk by it, hardly giving it a second glance, but when I close my eyes, it appears in the darkness, blazing with questions.

I close out of the tab a final time with a long breath. Maybe I’ll never get my answers. Maybe I’ll never see the painting in person. But at least I know I’m alive. That a small, simple painting of a pear tree in autumn moved me. That it changed my life.