Words have their limits. We can only communicate our thoughts and feelings with the vocabulary we have at our disposal.

This is where art enters in.

In “Hal Hunt: Journey and Metaphor,” May’s online St. Anthony on the Desert art exhibit (st-anthony.net/the-arts-council.html.), Fountain Hills painter Hal Hunt explores “journeys” as a metaphor of life. As such, he touches on what can only be intuited through visual narrative.

Hunt often drives from one town to another and either takes pictures on the drive to guide his art, or later uses his memory and imagination to paint the scene. Many of his paintings tell a story.

One such narrative painting, “Drive in the Palouse,” uses a common motif we see in his work: roads.

In this work, we see the open highway, the view of the driver on a journey, deep blue street, saturated yellow field on both sides. Yet, up ahead a huge mass of strong purples, reds, and oranges covers almost the entire horizon. Hunt explains how he leaves the interpretation of what is ahead to the viewer. Is it a sunset? A sunrise? Or a huge, raging fire? What is the road going toward?

Hunt uses the motif of a road as journey again in “Spring Storm Coming.” In this work, a confident hand on the steering wheel travels a winding path through fields. The view up ahead is an incoming storm. The road ahead turns, but we do not know what is beyond that turn. Does the road go into the storm or bypass it?

A similar mystery lies in “Arizona Drive,” a driver on a journey, but this time the road leads up to a tall mountain. Again, we do not know what the driver will find on the other side.

For many years of his life, Hunt piloted his own plane. He paints these flying experiences, further exploring the “journey as life” metaphor.

In “Cleared for Approach,” the viewer sits in the cockpit, flying straight into clouds that take up almost the whole sky. What is on the other side of those clouds? We can’t know.

In “Delight of Flight,” we see a small plane flying directly into a mountain range. Is this plane going to crash? Will the pilot pull up in time to avert disaster?

In this exhibit, Hal Hunt uses paint to tell stories of people on roads and paths that lead to the unknown. Mystery lies ahead in this journey called life.

We do not know what tomorrow will bring. That sense of the unknown can bring anticipation, apprehension, hope, fear or perhaps some visceral thoughts or feelings that can only be wordlessly experienced in the contemplation of a picture.