Seurat’s “Model Seated”
Sandra Nelson
If you have seen bees swarm, the ball pulling down the branch—heard the racket of an old radio on no station, you know how I feel. I'm here, for now, but not as you see me. My body is a shimmering pink swarm of bees. My hair, a speckled hive. The sun helps me trade places with the chair and the window has already claimed my face. It's like I'm stirred in. But some lump of me persists. When I look at snow I see the atoms, like needles, dart from thing to thing, but something thinks them back again.
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Seurat’s pointillism is a style of painting made from dots of color that come together in the viewer’s eye forming the appearance of a solid object. This reminded me of the debate about matter and energy. At the speed of light matter turns to energy. Is matter merely stable energy? Quantum physics focus on fields, which create virtual particles and anti-particles, which can pop into and out of existence. Objects are made by waves in the field. The “Model Seated,” is like an unstable wave in the field.
First published in Kansas Quarterly/Arkansas Review Vol 26, No. 1-4, 1996
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