The Eye

He had 'the eye', they say, that could see beyond the visible, Peder Balke did - one of my most beloved Norwegian painters.

Again, here, those layers upon layers: the living man, gone, his works still resonant and mysterious on museum walls - lyrical sketches of nordic light; here a clay eye (subsequently covered with wax, then a plaster slip before hot bronze was poured in from the top, to be set as you see it today) attached to his memory, on a bust given his name, modeled by the sculptor of generations later, Per Ung, now standing on the side of a country road facing a tiny church and encountered by chance today, by a wayward wanderer in new territory on an island she'd never heard of till today.

An old art-love renewed and enriched, via six degrees of separation. To think of all the "ifs", and "but-fors", that led to going down this road rather than a myriad others.