Family Circle

Artist: John Biggers
Title: Family Circle, 1997
Location: Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, North Carolina

First Impression

I was definitely pulled in because of the colors. Personally, I tend to gravitate toward blacks, blues, and earthy colors. But more than that, with this work I was deeper in thought with the parental lessons.

As the child in the middle appears to be reaching upward, the adults are facing away. For some reason and I can’t understand it all, but it appears to me that the parents have turned from them as an act of letting go, but the child seems to be wanting more. In other words, maybe it’s the child’s attempt to hold on or to be picked up for longer than they feel is necessary for growth and development. It feels to me immediately that the parents are trying to teach that valuable lesson that we all need to learn – letting go.

The Reflection

The Quiet Architecture of Letting Go

There are moments in life when we become explicitly focused on milestones that we overlook the lessons we learn along the way. Achievements like job promotions and graduations are easy to recognize. I think that’s because others tend to celebrate them for us. While they are definitely important events, we often pass over the unseen structures that are built by early lesson milestones. So as I stood there in front of the painting, I didn’t quite know what to feel. But I came home with the picture and took a few more moments to study it.

There is no real way to know what Mr. Biggers truly envisioned with this, but I know what it does for me. It reminded me of a story that I didn’t realize had a moral until I was truly an adult. Our parents had the toughest job before them all along – raising responsible children through guidance, encouragement, patience, forgiveness, and presence. But then the biggest and probably the hardest one to teach was helping them understand impermanence and that life is built on change. Nothing remains the same and parents aren’t around forever. A child’s hands reaching for their parents wanting continue conversations that they once had, waiting on us when everything around us seems to be rushed and in a hurry, having someone who always believes in us (even before we learned to believe in ourselves). These are things we as children never really understand and they never make the headlines.

When we are mindfully aware, these structures are revealed to us, and we are invited in to take a deeper observation. Our strongest relationships are the ones we have to eventually learn to let go of. And that’s a complicated thing to cope with.

One Question to Carry With You

What unseen messages and lessons did your parents teach you? Not through words, but through experience.