Like Rays of Light That Dissipate Into Space

Yesterday morning a dear friend told me of her indescribable tragic news.

Yesterday morning a dear friend told me of her indescribable tragic news.

For some reason I decided to spend the morning rewiring my four JAMO speakers. I’ve had them since 1995, I had bought them in Greece while I was living there. This time I wired them correctly, making sure they all had the same length, and all the black and red wires connected the corresponding sockets. I also switched my amplifier mode to Bluetooth, which saved me from static annoyance that came from channeling everything through my computer tower. The speakers now worked beautifully and sounded magical, as if the musicians were playing and singing live in my studio.

Next I had a profound need to listen to Puccini’s Suor Angelica, but it wasn’t available on Amazon Music, which is my go to. I was looking for a specific recording starring Katia Ricciarelli. It’s mind-blowingly beautiful and heartbreaking. It’s about a woman in a royal family who had a child out of wedlock. They committed her to a convent. After a few years she was visited by her aunt, the princess, who coldly tells her how she shamed the family and, almost as an afterthought, that her child has died from an illness.

Suor Angelica tells her aunt what a bitch she is, and after some time reflecting, took a tragic action. She knew about herbs and created a potion to kill herself. After she drank the poison she was filled with tremendous guilt and horror over what she had done. When the poison began to take hold, she had a vision of light, and coming out of the light was her little child, nudged by god, coming toward her, whom she embraced. God forgave her and enabled her to enter the gates of heaven, where she could be with her child forever.

I have only painted one artist, and that is of Puccini. His music feels like a manifestation of my soulmate. No filter, it simply feels like the operas feed directly into my soul.

Newberry, Puccini, 1985, oil.

While listening to the opera, I pulled out from my art file drawers three large charcoal drawings that I did as part of a series on mourning. The total series was fourteen or fifteen drawings, each took about twenty hours of drawing directly from the model. Not shown is the first one, as karma would have it, the model told me he agreed to pose for the drawing for personal reasons, his father shot and killed his mother, then turned the gun on himself. Imagine the pressure to do a drawing that honored the model and his story. But back to yesterday, I contemplated these three drawings that I drew decades ago while listening to Suor Angelica’s lament.

Newberry, Mourning 1, 1992, charcoal.

Newberry, Mourning 2, 1992, charcoal.

Newberry, Mourning 3, 1992, charcoal.

My subject/light concept for the series is that when someone near us dies, it doesn’t stop us from wanting to communicate with them. We still want to call them on the phone and talk to them, and then realize their physical being is no longer here. It drives home they are really dead. So all the feelings, memories, and things we want to share with them pour out of us like rays of light that dissipate into space.

Michael Newberry, Idyllwild, California. July 3, 2025

Originally published today here: https://michaelnewberry.com/2025/07/03/like-rays-of-light-that-dissipate-into-space/