Using Art as a writing prompt

After I read 'Sister Wendy's Meditations on Silence' by Sister Wendy Beckett, notorious British Art Historian, nun and BBC star- I think about Mark Rothko's minimalist color-field paintings completely differently. Rothko was a Latvian-born abstract expressionist who took his own life on the day I was born.

He painted large rectangles of color that he intended to make the viewer feel "enveloped within" the painting. He deliberately wanted his works to be devoid of recognizable symbols or mythology. Sister Wendy feels that Rothko's work is therefore more evocative and more intimate than other Art. I think that images like this one allow you to be alone with God away from the clutter, stress, and distractions of this world.

So art can create virtual sacred places in your mind.

Turns out that in 1964 he was commissioned to design a Roman Catholic (now non-denominational)l chapel in Houston, Texas. It is a meditative space filled with his paintings. Could you imagine?