St. Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology
The Hope of Simeon

The Hope of Simeon
Tyler Tenbarge
Acrylic on Canvas (24x30”)
St. Meinrad, Indiana – March 2013

The Hope of Simeon situates the viewer as a pilgrim, standing at the Saint Joseph Shrine about two miles east of Saint Meinrad Archabbey & School of Theology.

In painting this piece, I aimed to draw the eyes immediately to the sky, where the viewer desires to stand back to take in the magnificence of the bright colors and the unfettered brush strokes. Swirling clouds loom overhead, to some extent mimicking the blue-gray swirls of the marble pillars inside the Archabbey Church; rays of light burst forth from a hinted-at source; and low-lying clouds break open in a nearly audible response. The eyes are then tugged toward the narrowed window of landscape below, where tough, new growth springs up in the budding foreground following a spring rain. Using color and size between earth and sky, I tried orchestrating a tension between the ineffable “dawn from on high breaking upon us” and the more mundane stubble, mud and rock of southern Indiana hills. Arrested in this very human tension, I am trying to remind the viewer that art can only attempt to hold together these two worlds more perfectly found married by God’s grace in man.

Like Simeon, patient and certain in his hope, this piece aims to stir hope in the sighing soul of the viewer, and to help us feel Christ’s longing for the us, on-looking pilgrims, to find hope on our groundlevel journey home.


"The Last Sunset" by Robert Healey