it’s always been one of my very favorites – because of that gorgeous, dayglo salmon-colored Sun and her arrested, awed attention and ear-witness to the birdsong //

i’ve experienced Jules Breton’s “The Song of The Lark” twice — in The Art Institute of Chicago’s collection – during college – and most recently, in 2015, on loan to the University of Nebraska’s Sheldon Museum of Art;

Nebraska was home to author Willa Cather (Cather is a Nebraska native by way of colonialism and settlerism) and her third novel, was named for this 1884 painting//

while i was viewing the painting at The Sheldon, i conversed and queried serendipitously with the Chicago-born docent: does the lark sing most sweetly or urgently at sunrise or sunset; does this work depict a sunset in the west; or a sunrise in the east; is her fatigue residual, a worker rising so very early, again, on end – or is it from an already completed hard day’s work? or both, both, both?

let the mystery be.