George Tooker

Have you ever considered how much of your life is spent waiting?  Minutes wasted on the telephone, listening to annoying recorded music. Hours lost in airport terminals. Days, dragging on until you receive the results of a medical test. Years, passing in pursuit of an unreachable goal. American Artist George Tooker has a special interest in the threshold moments of life, when we are poised in the eternal present between past and future. His lithograph, The Window, is just one of a series of artworks, depicting people, alone or in groups, peeping through parted curtains, peering out of doorways, or leaning out of windows, awaiting something, someone. With similarly sculpted bodies and near identical facial features, this man and woman are not two specific individuals but types of all humanity, an impression enhanced by the beautifully stylized, interlocking composition of the figures. You might say they are Adam and Eve at a window sill. Their calm, almost serene, expressions, certainly, suggest they are expecting more than just the coming of the mailman. The life of the spirit is all about waiting for what is yet to come.  Hebrews 11:1 (KJV) describes faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” The key question is how we wait--with anxiety, frustration and impatience or with confidence, serenity, and hope.

From The Holy Bible in the King James Version [KJV] (Thomas Nelson: 1976)