Music of Life

Music of Life
2000/2006, acrylic on canvas
66 x 66 in.


Music of Life


The major theme of Music of Life is the relationship between the renewal of life and music. Life itself is musical in many respects. It has a rhythm, a pulse, and a heartbeat. As life reverberates through time it changes, transforms, and constantly renews. Day gives way to night, which in turn begets another day. Birth begins a life, which in turn begets another birth. It is an endless birth/death cycle that dances to the endless rhythms of life.

In the minimalistic composition of Music of Life I have chosen a newly born infant as the central image. The infant is alone, isolated, and represents rebirth and the continuation of life. He magically hovers above an octagonal-shaped golden-colored cloth and is surrounded by a musical notation. The Renaissance-styled notation is circular in structure and uses an endless repetition of three whole notes (A, D and F) to reference the endless cycle of life. The music is based on a composition by Arvo Part titled Spiegel im Spiegel. Hearing the music, the infant covers his ears as if to block out its incessant repetition.

The golden-colored cloth is attached to a huge circular-shaped vine by eight small red ropes that form crosses that span a transcendent blue space. The blue space represents the gulf between two worlds while the ropes reference Christ's passion, and the vines, which are braided into an endless knot, reiterates the idea of the endless cycle of life.

Entering from the edges of the picture are a myriad gray-colored hands of the dead. As they reach toward the center they grab onto, or are entangled by, the vines. They are desperate to get beyond the vine to the center where they hope to recapture the youth and life they have lost. At the same time they are seemingly unaware that they are grasping for a life that cannot be regained.

In Music of Life I have depicted the tension between the purity and beauty of music and life, and the emptiness of its loss at the end of life. In that sense the painting emphasizes the preciousness of life and how we should all embrace the gloriousness of being alive.

- Brian Mains, October 2019