THE
ORPHAN
This
1986 painting,
entitled
"The Orphan"
by Mulleian
quickly drew
public
attention
during the
1980s and
1990s. It's popularity
became
apparent
while on display
for six months
at one of the largest
west coast
exhibits after
being
nominated for the
ASI (Artist's
Society International)
Award.
This monumental
art competition
drew fifteen thousand
artists
nationally
and internationally,
and
lasted
well over
a year.
In
1986 one of Mulleian’s most popular paintings, “The Orphan”, was awarded the
ASI award by Artist Society International and presented by Charlotte Mailliard
at a gala event at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco.
It
is out of a uniquely poetic imagination that Mulleian asks questions about time,
but questions also about feeling and transcendence, about loss and isolation,
about mortality and metaphysical realities, about spirit and light, about creativity
and destruction, and quite certainly, about hope and transformation.
More
than any of his other works, the one painting that manifests virtually all of
these characteristic qualities is The Orphan, the award winning, sensitively
romantic work that was completed in 1986 and became one of the public's most
favorite pieces, and for good reason.
Deeply
melancholic, strangely hopeful, and essentially mystical there is a poignant
vortex of time depicted here in universal themes of profound loss and gradual
decay set among the ongoing, majestic cycles of nature.
Placed
in such a context, human intention and suffering are as transient as the nettles
in the field, as richly meaningful and inevitable as the passage of a sudden
autumn shower. All are necessary, in fact, essential to the whole.
In
warmly romantic, gently muted colors, the dappled, richly sensuous play of light
caresses the weathered, skeletal remains of a rapidly deteriorating wooden house.
At the threshold of the ruin the spirit of a child sits dreaming. How many hopes,
how many memories, and how lovingly remembered?
Past,
present and future are all presented here, but the prevailing mood is one of
overarching serenity. There is an implication that natural cycles of life, though
majestically unrelenting may also be understood to be sympathetic when seen
in a larger than personal context.
As
evidenced in the witness of an onlooking squirrel and a gently arching branch,
Nature, in her seasonal breath of autumn, seems to reach to shelter and comfort
the child. In transcending the human loss, yet embracing the spiritual force
that governs it all, what appears to be a separation may, in fact, be quite
the opposite. In one poignant moment, all becomes one, and matter and spirit
have found a balance.
As
the artist quotes: Structural permanence, falling away to time, is the very
brace that weathers against the elements of impermanence. A perfect paradox.
