Cannot Reach it Yet, by Ashley Bryan

This is an ekphrastic writing based on the painting, Cannot Reach it Yet by Ashely Bryan. Check out the painting here: https://www.bates.edu/news/2020/10/23/bates-museum-of-art-celebrates-the-work-of-beloved-maine-artist-ashley-bryan/

The vibrant morning sun shines on a community connected inside and out of doors, inside and out of bodies. Bright yellow shapes create space in the center, joyfully letting light in — though there is darkness, shade and cool colors being chased to the edges, or maybe being allowed to just be. 

It seems to be a cityscape, tall buildings leaning musically this way and that, homes and offices, schools and windows crammed in solidly, geometrically, with tension, motion and dynamism in their movement — give and take, holding and yielding, the rhythmic balance of so many beings existing together in one place. 

An arched entryway opens over a tilted doorframe, perhaps symbolizing all the ways we enter — a room, a space, a classroom, a home, a community — and all the ways we exit, too. 

This painting, created during his sister’s battle with cancer and after her death and featuring the final words she uttered, may be all about entrances and exits: the anxiousness and eagerness with which we reach and stretch, bend and sway, hold each other and hope as we move on to our next step. Whether we are those eager children connected hopefully, the grounded guide standing steadily, showing them the way. Or, a teacher cheering on their kids with these same words, maybe you cannot reach it yet, but stretch, persist, keep trying and you will get there. Those children rooted even as they grow. 

Or Ashley’s sister herself, set off to the side, seeking her final destination in rays of cerulean light peaking through the saturated pink and burnt orange sky. 

Cannot reach it yet.

Hurry up.

Wait. Now.

At last.