Rembrandt Mennonites
Rembrandt Mennonites on Holiday 22x28, 2002, oil on canvas. Available for Purchase
This homestead is a contrived stage based loosely on childhood landmarks. Father shears sheep, mother tends the children, and two boys harvest hot peppers. Children are unabashed, straining necks to decode the mid-seventeenth century visitors from Amsterdam. Many of Rembrandt van Rijn's friends and his wife Saskia were Mennonites. Some scholars believe he may have practiced his faith with them. In this painting their spirits arrive on a conservative Mennonite farm on the American coast during the early 1970s and observe the family laboring. They see a vast cultural separation that they did not practice in their own lifetime as Mennonites. During my childhood the Mispillion Lighthouse (1831-2001) was a favorite landmark for sketching. About thirty years before the Civil War, Delaware Governor Polk purchased the land for $5 and built the lighthouse on Slaughter Beach. Barges once transported manufactured goods and coal from Philadelphia, and steamships traveled up and down the river. Rebuilt four times, eventually it was hit by lightning and largely destroyed, thus symbolizing the end of an era. Like the lighthouse, the culture of my childhood community has evolved and is fading. Little differentiates it from other cultural traditions.