Destinations Unknown 

Joseph Lorusso’s painting presents us with two figures paused at the threshold of a train car. One figure shades his eyes, gazing out, while the other sits, withdrawn and contemplative. The hat pulled low over the brow and the hand shielding the eyes are motifs echoed across time. Consider the wanderers depicted by Caspar David Friedrich, figures who stand at the edge of the known world, looking out into an unwritten future, fraught with both possibility and danger. This gesture—the hand raised in a protective, searching motion—speaks to a deep human impulse to understand what lies ahead. The posture of shielding the eyes recurs in various guises through art history, suggesting more than just physical protection from the sun. It is a gesture laden with anticipation, of confronting fate, a primal signal of vigilance and the eternal quest for meaning. It resonates with our own fears and hopes as we stand on the precipice of change, uncertain of the future.