About the Artist
At the modest age of 29, Carrie Graber is already one of today's rising superstars in the art community. Her romantic style and dramatic juxtaposition of light and shadow is reminiscent of the Dutch master Vermeer. She has already accumulated an impressive number of accolades and awards, and is considered one of America's most exciting young artists.
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About the Piece
True to Carrie Graber’s signature style of portraying women and girls in moments of intense self realization, this stunning work shows the subject in a moment of deep introspection while the viewer is allowed a fleeting glimpse of her most private thoughts. She is clothed in a classic white dress made of a gauzy material which gives her an ethereal glow as she basks in the golden beams of the sunset reflected off the Salt Lake Temple. She contemplates her future, and her white garment indicates not only her purity and innocence, but also her eventual wedding gown, temple dress, and place in eternity. There are two aspects of this painting
which are particularly striking, and in fact, somewhat unusual.
First, the girl’s posture and the position of her hands and bare feet suggest a dancer’s pose. While it is obvious she has been trained in her craft, this stance is also exceedingly natural for her, suggesting the naturalness of her faith, or her “dance with God” as it were. This, of course, invokes images of Miriam, King David and others whose deep faith was demonstrated by their jubilation before the Lord. Also, her view
of the temple is unique in that it is not from a literal vantage point. The glowing space before her is indeed a window, but has the set-apart nature of a framed image.
In the majority of her paintings, Graber gives great attention to the room in which her subjects are found. In this case, however, the room is unimportant, drawing the viewer’s full attention to the girl and the temple. Finally, the image before her seems to be unusually stylized. The trees, for instance, are not indicative of those found in the Salt Lake area. Rather, they point to a number of scriptural passages, including Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (in Daniel 4,) in which the mighty king is represented by a stately tree that will be cut down to a stump, but whose roots will be preserved, even though he has lived as a beast until he might acknowledge the sovereign power of the Lord. Even more, it may be indicative of Lehi’s vision of the Tree of Life and the fountain of Living Water described in 1 Nephi 8, and later interpreted in 1 Nephi 11:25. The river also brings to mind the same imagery that water conjured up in the American Spiritual Movement. That is, moving water was the passage to freedom and spiritual serenity, and heaven itself was said to lie on the other side of the Jordan. Finally, the cow represents the prosperity of eternity, the well-fed cattle of plenty in Pharaoh’s dream, and the fatted calf that will be at the feast for all God’s children who have
returned to him.
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