An Angel, Not a Man

The article

In the arms of an angel, a person can feel safe. But do angels exist at all?

In Christianity, Judaism and Islam they are held to be real: spiritual beings, messengers, created by God. Seen from the side of science, angels remain where faith, mythology and human imagination keep their belongings. Nothing has ever been produced for the record.

Many people are sceptical about angels. Others believe in them without hesitation. I will risk saying that almost everyone would like to have one of their own — a guardian angel by preference. Someone who watches over our safety, who warns us before a reckless step, who leads us by the right paths through a life that does not come with a map.

Think for a moment about what such a figure is actually said to be like.

A guardian angel helps the one he protects and expects nothing in return — no reward, no money. He is sensitive: he feels human pain, sorrow and injury deeply, as though they were his own. In his presence we feel safe, and our darker emotions, even anger, quietly pass. He never looks for revenge. He does not speak badly of others. He does not deliberately harm another person. And he works in hiding — he does not advertise his goodness, and prefers to remain in the shade.

Can a human being have those qualities?

I believe deeply that a human being can. Sometimes we meet someone so good that we say it spontaneously, almost without deciding to. In Polish there is a phrase for exactly this: anioł – nie człowiek. An angel, not a man. It is said quietly, usually to a third person, about somebody who would be embarrassed to hear it.

That is the person in this drawing.

In In Arms Angel a tall male figure stands over a smaller female one. His arms are so wide that they did not fit inside the format — they leave the paper on both sides, and the viewer completes them. This was not a compromise with the sheet. The space of safety he makes for her had to be larger than the picture that contains it. He has the power to create that space and to hold it open.

And she, in her fragility and slenderness, accepts the care with grace. That, too, is a strength, and a rarer one than it looks: to be held without disappearing.

The work is drawn in pen and ink on paper, from 1997. Ink is an unforgiving material. It permits no correction, no lifting, no returning to a line the following morning to soften it. Every stroke in this drawing was committed once. That severity suits the subject — the gesture of holding someone is also a thing that is either done or not done, and cannot be half-withdrawn afterwards.

There are no wings here. No halo, no light from above, no insignia of the divine. What the drawing shows is a human being who is an angel: someone entirely ordinary, of the kind you might have sat beside last week.

It happens sometimes that a person's arms are like an angel's wings.

In Arms Angel, pen and ink on paper, 42 × 30 cm, 1997. One of a kind, with certificate of authenticity, shipped from the studio in Boxholm, Sweden. See the drawing →