Planted by the Rivers of Water
Psalm 1:3Living room
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170 gsm archival matte paper, ships rolled
Perfect for self-framing
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One green thing, standing where somebody planted it
Close up, the water is the loudest thing in it. A pale diagonal moving through country that has clearly been dry a long time, with the bank left untidy, the way a bank is. The tree stands off to one side, not centred, not tall for the sake of being tall. Its roots go where the water is, and the picture stops there without telling you anything else.
What living with it gives you is a wall that asks nothing. You look up from the sofa, or from the folding pile, and the green is holding where you left it.
People read it differently, which is half the pleasure of it. One sees a tree that found the water. Another sees a river crossing a dry country on its way somewhere. A friend stood in front of it and said it looked like one green thing put down on purpose, and then asked what it came from. A home with that on the long wall reads as rooted, and guests feel it before they can name it.
The light gets to the water first
The light arrives at the water before anything else, a thin pale line lying along the river. I keep looking at the gap between the dry ground and that line, the small distance a root has to cross before anything green is possible. The tree is already across it. That is the part I stay with: not the reaching, but the moment just after, when the water has been found and nothing more has to be said about it.
I hope the room this hangs in goes quiet the same way. That whoever passes it a hundred times in a week looks up on the hundred and first, sees the green still holding where it was put, and feels a little less like a visitor in her own house.
Two people take this one home
One is the woman a few weeks past the move, boxes gone, the main room still looking like nobody has decided anything. She wanted the house prayed over, nothing ceremonial, only faith in the power of her Lord's name, and she did not want a lettering set doing the announcing for her.
The other is a daughter in late April, buying for a mother who says every year that she truly does not want stuff, she has everything she needs and no space for more. A painting is not stuff. Her mother hangs it and reads it twice, once as water and weather, once as Psalm 1.
It goes on the long wall above a low sofa, usually the 60x80 cm, and it holds its own as the left panel of a row of three.
What arrives, and what it is made of
- 170 gsm matte uncoated paper Print only: a single sheet printed to its edges, no shine under a lamp in the evening.
- 12 mm black wood frame Flat square profile, 22 mm deep, matte finish, plexiglass front, no mat, on 170 gsm coated silk paper.
- Three sizes 30x40 cm, 45x60 cm and 60x80 cm. The 60x80 is the one that settles a long wall above a sofa.
Before the nail goes in the wall
1.What christian wall art works over a sofa?
2.What does the tree planted by the water mean?
3.How do I hang two prints over a couch?
4.What can I give a mother who says she does not want more stuff?
The last bare wall in the house
Planted by the Rivers of Water, in three sizes, framed or print only.
