Mom and Magritte

My mother was a fan of the artist Rene Magritte. I'm not certain why, especially, since her tastes ran toward Impressionists and realistic art over the bowler hatted surrealism of Magritte. But one of her favorite paintings was Magritte's Dominion of Light (or Empire of Light, actually a series of related paintings). It remains one of my favorites as well. I recently took my oldest daughter, who never got to meet mom, to a local art museum that has one of the Dominion paintings. I tried to explain to her what it mean to be in the room with that painting, and how it was my mother's favorite, and also mine. I don't know if she understood, or if she really registered it, but she held my hand while we stood and looked at it for a while and that was enough.

Dominion of Light, Rene Magritte, 1954