Before the Storm

Ryan Neubuaer

Jason Judd

Contemporary Arts

Tuesday November 1, 2016

Deborah Willis Before the Storm, Eatonville
Digital chromogenic print, 2012 

Deborah Willis

Before the Storm, Eatonville

Digital chromogenic print, 2012

Courtesy of the artist and Material Life, New Orleans

Project statement by Deborah Willis, which says, “I believe that Eatonville is enriched by its history as a black incorporated town and the cultural legacy that Zora Neale Hurston left in depicting its beauty, spirituality and family memories in her numerous novels, short stories, and letters.”

When I saw this picture I took a minute to look at. As I was looking at this picture it felt so empty. Then I remembered the mood felt like it was something of out of Edward Hoppers pieces. It looked like something that was empty and gone at the same time depressing. The field, house, and the area around the home looks like it was abandoned by everyone. Just as abandoned like Edward Hopper’s The Lighthouse at Two Lights. This work has a mood that feels like something is empty like no one is home. Hopper has this ability to set a tone/mood in his paintings. His mood is quiet and lonely but he is using bright colors to show some hope but it feels like something is missing.

Edward Hopper The Lighthouse at Two Lights, 1929

For example when you live your life by yourself no one is entering it’s just you and it’s not bad and it’s not good just a shell of a person walking. Just as Deborah Willis Before the Storm, Eatonville photograph, the mood of the photo feels like everyone abandoned their home and everything just as the storm was about to hit. It’s like an empty shell of a animal, it has the shape of the animal but nothing inside.

Empty Shell

 I was depressing to look at but at the same time eye catching. The thing that was eye catching, for me, was the contrast between the clouds and the long tree trunk. These elements of air, earth, fire, and water fight in a battle that we are stuck in between the elements of nature but at the same time they live harmoniously. This caught my eye because of the dark clouds in the background and at the same time the sun is hitting the trunk of the tree that is way high. It looked the air and earth was going to play a game of survival.  Going back to the mood that Edward Hopper makes in his paintings, the contrast of light but having the feeling so dark and empty.