Love - The Spirit of All Seasons
by Madeline Carol

Love knows no limit or time. It is enduring and immutable and is shared by young and old alike. Its focus may be a young romance, a lasting marriage, affectionate grandparents, a family pet, young children or a place called home. Love, knowing no bounds, is timeless and is what memories are made of. It is the ingredient that makes happen miracles and fond recollections. It gives one insight with depth and perception and creates light in darkness and warmth in cold. Here in our memories and experiences is love. There is no finer place than Charleston, South Carolina, to experience the love of life itself - a place where our eyes can gaze upon the historic Pineapple Gates through an imaginary window, blending the seasons of our life and displaying those things dreams are made of.

Charleston has been a place where people have met and launched new beginnings. Charleston has been like a gateway to a person's life, illuminating a way to happiness while giving one a sense of romantic security. Charleston at night has been beautiful light reflections on its old streets, with windows like glowing looking-glasses to history and legends. Truly, Charleston is a timeless city of lamplights and lovers.

Madeline Carol again utilizes artistic techniques of apparitions to bring the viewer all that is Charleston. In this new painting, "Love - The Spirit of All Seasons", Madeline brings the spirit of love in full focus before the historic Pineapple Gates. Outside the window are the ghosts of a young couple in the spring season of their love, timelessly reliving their romance in an almost angelic-like glow, caring for one another and ready to board the carriage to go forward to a new life together. Inside the window, on the table are photographs of family members in the summer of their love after having recited their vows of marriage. Then there is the fall season of love as symbolized by the aged and passed loved ones of a past generation, immortalized by the ghosts of a grandmother seeking to touch and protect the object of her love, and a grandfather who, along with their beloved pet, stay near to the home and loved ones. These spirits have been succeeded by their children who are now adults and have their own daughter. And there is the season of winter, when the spirit of Christmas, as symbolized in the reflections in the mirror, brings families together and inspires family members to remember those who are not present. It is a time of joy and peace when the timeless spirit of love is warmest and aglow and nothing seems impossible.

As you look at this remarkable painting, you can see the little girl, warm and secure, gazing out of the window into a cold but heavenly scene. You wonder, is she or isn't she really seeing the apparition of love Madeline has suggested to you in the ghostly appearance, or is she looking for Santa Claus? Is it 1989 with the wondrous Christmas snow cover? There is that spirit of love symbolized by the guardianship of a now gone but not forgotten grandmother, whose love makes her seem so near. There is the comforting presence of parents which makes it feel like home. You can feel the warmth, love and security in the gathering of loved ones which shuts out the cold reality of the world outside and makes everything seem like a wonderland. Through the timeless window you know you are still in Charleston, but you also know that all around you singing out in glorious color is the reminder that love is the spirit of all seasons which transcends all time and place.

Once more Madeline Carol has successfully conceptualized a feeling through the extraordinary use of colors and apparitions, putting focus on things that are precious to us so that we can nostalgically be reminded of our family ties and our ties to the land that make us who we are. Madeline Carol reinforces in this painting that we are not alone, but that a spirit of love extends like a force beyond time encompassing all the seasons of our worldly existence and it may be invoked into reality by a glimpse of "Love - The Spirit of All Seasons".

Madeline Carol, Capturing the Spirits
Art Gallery