Mira Aronson · No. 161

The Fiddler's Dream

The Fiddler's Dream gives Chagall's most beloved figure a luminous life of its own. A green-faced fiddler floats just above the snowy rooftops of a village, bow drawn across the strings, his music seeming to hold the whole dreamlike scene aloft. Mira Aronson draws directly on the deep well of Eastern-European folk memory that Chagall mined — the village fiddler as emblem of a whole vanished world, of celebration and survival, of tradition balanced precariously on a rooftop. The colour is rich and emotive: deep blues, a burning red roof, the fiddler's coat glowing against the night. Logic is suspended in favour of feeling; the figure hovers, the village leans, the moon watches. There is melancholy folded into the joy, the bittersweet note that runs through all folk music and through Chagall's whole world. Aronson's line is flowing and tender, the drawing unselfconsciously poetic. Lyrical, nostalgic and quietly profound, it makes visible the way music can lift an entire community out of hardship and into wonder. It is a hymn to memory, played on a single floating violin above the snow.

An original oil painting on canvas by Mira Aronson, painted to order — never a reproduction. Dreamlike folk fantasy — floating lovers, fiddlers and flying figures over moonlit villages in deep blues and reds, in the poetic spirit of Chagall.

Artist

Mira Aronson

Medium

Oil on canvas

Finish

Unframed, ready to hang or frame

Made

To order, by hand