Ascent:
A Perspective on Loss to Transformation
Paintings by Rebecca Leer
the Backstory
On view in our beautiful galleries thru 9/29

As my tax guy says, “Nobody gets out of this life alive.” The trajectory is predictable. Although death is universal, when it visits us personally, it is, well, personal.

At 46, my very fit husband was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. After a three-year war with it, he died. Certainly a change in our plans and in the plans for our small child. One of the hardest things about a loss is not only the event itself, but the loss of all that could have been after.

I am a painter, so painting is what I do. I was doing a lot of still lifes at the time, and it was a natural progression to include articles of Rob’s in the set-ups, especially as I was going through all of his belongings. Some items were painfully meaningful while others were more incidental characters in a man’s life. Painting the arrangements brought serenity and presented a path through grief. The paintings themselves resonated with others, and that affirmation gave me courage and strength.

The progression to landscapes felt natural in the healing process. Snarls of trees represented chaotic emotions; the war of wave and rock reflected inner turmoil. Gradually, as I untweezed my insides, the scenes I painted took on an expansion.

Roger Scruton says, “The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow and affirmation in joy. It shows human life to be worthwhile.” Painting these works provided me a portal to healing; I could feel beyond what was directly in front of me to the sacred.