I’ve been thinking lately how, with all that’s been going on in the world in the past few years, we seem to have found ways to acknowledge collectively a range of emotions we might otherwise have kept to ourselves. It feels like there have never been more books, articles, social media posts and talk-show discussions about our grief, our sadness and our fear. And many of us have found some way to own those feelings in socially acceptable ways.

But it’s also been hard to ignore the sense that violence is ticking up here in the US, from the recent Brooklyn subway attack to the steady occurrence of hate crimes against Asian-Americans, to the attack on the Capitol last year. It makes me wonder if we are talking enough about the emotion of anger. Perhaps we hesitate because many of us assume that anger is something we should try not to entertain. But in truth, it is an emotion we all feel at some point, and one that always needs a release. When we fail to pay attention to it, it usually ends up expressing itself in inappropriate ways.

The 19th-century painter Thomas Moran was known for his sublime, dramatic depictions of the landscapes of America. He imbued his work with an aura of the divine and a sense of overwhelming grandeur. His 1911 oil painting “The Angry Sea” is arresting in its evocation of the turbulent nature of anger. The clouds are dark but glow in patches, as if the air itself were still simmering, timing its next outburst. The whitetops rising amid the blackened waves conjure up the notion of white-hot emotion. One can almost hear the water bellowing.