David C. Smith, Jan de Quelery’s
Tchera Niyego
From a mystical viewpoint, taught in particular by David C. Smith*, the ship can be seen as the body, the material, the physical; the vessel with which we navigate the world in which we live and breathe and have our beings. The sky represents the thinking/feeling process of a human being. The sea, the ocean having a much more complex and ultimately incomprehensible nature is, so to speak, the Mystery. Synonymous terms for the Mystery are the Unknown and Unknowable, the Mind, or Space, Love, Light, as well as Unity or Divine Presence. From the perspective of this paradoxical symbol system, the vessel, its thinking/feeling process and the Divine Presence as a whole are understood to be the inseparable Unity Itself.
In Jan De Quelery’s work we see these partners occupying about equal space within the frame, for the most part, in the continuum of the artist’s career up to now. There are also the other times when most interesting shifts take place in his narrative of what turbulent or peaceful state his personal mind may have been in. At some rare occasions we see no ship(s) in sight, neither the ocean but only a lighthouse at the beach like a criticizing witness gazing while waiting for the most disastrous to happen; yet the dry land, the sky and the ocean are all intermingled in a dull fog. Sometimes we see the ship tiny compared to the ocean, or we see the ship sinking altogether; a cheerful sight indeed full of happy thoughts of death for the making vaster of a tiny-little claustrophobic personal and somehow still optimistic mind thinking sweet/hot death and clapping hands at the killing of the witness. Wondering if this is letting go, surrendering to the ocean to take over completely.
This is the data of the artist hinting that he has left something behind. It is this beloved act of faith that lights up the eyes of the artist while telling the brilliant and pristine stories that Jan De Quelery tells so gracefully about the life of each ship in each of the circumstance it is portrayed in, like that of Mauretania. Mauretania is a magnificent 36-year-old that had traveled many seas and connected many people as well as fighting many battles, portrayed by De Quelery as only days before he watched it get demolished down to sand.
Maybe Jan De Quelery’s beautiful wife’s understanding of those painstakingly precise moments is what enables the artist to also be as passionate as he is when he tells us about their lives and their child as if they were right next to him in the room while they may be in another country, during the closing reception at the Broadway Gallery.
*David C. Smith is a teacher and lecturer on the Nature and the Function of the Mind from the perspective of Jewish Mysticism.
