never found a glowing rabbit, but i did locate a glowing rabbi
The only paintings shown from the 1990's are of two rabbis with Torahs. How did we get back here? Bloom had done some rabbi paintings in the 1940's but since then all the subjects have turned their back on the Jewish world. Now it seems to reappear in images of movement and struggle. The rabbi is ghostly pale, grasping a golden Torah. Behind him to the left is the ark with the Ten Commandments, a crown and rampant lions dominating the upper left. Opposite that image is a white presence in the upper right that the rabbi is gazing towards. The rabbi is pinned between the Torah and the ark, fixated on this whiteness that operates as a visual exit out of the painting. Has Bloom brought out the Torah again into his life? Is the search for meaning now between the glowing rabbi and his Torah and the mysterious white light, the ultimate exit? Hyman Bloom continues to paint in the determination to create visual pleasures of color and light in search of meaning and spirituality. He has served his audience well in this journey and remarks that "the artist's reward is pleasure, ecstasy from contact with the unknown." It is our reward too.