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A Look Back: Mountain of Frustration

February 16, 2026 by redtreetimes

GC Myers – Mountain of Frustration 1995

Frustration is one of the great things in art. Satisfaction is nothing.

—–Philip Guston, Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations

I don’t know that I completely agree with the late artist Philip Guston on frustration being one of the great things in art. When you are truly frustrated great is not a word that springs to mind. 

It might be great in the fact that it is sometimes a potent motivator for artists. It creates a sense of restlessness that I believe artists need in order to maintain growth in their work.

Without this restlessness, the artist begins to view their work with mere satisfaction and as Guston says, satisfaction is nothing. I agree completely with that.

Frustration for the artist comes in many forms. Sometimes it is a mental block that prevents them from achieving their vision or, sometimes, from even being able to work. Been there, done that.

Sometimes it comes from outside the artist, in the obligations and responsibilities that often keeps them from focusing on their work. Been there, done that.

Sometimes it comes with feeling that their work is overlooked and underappreciated, that the outside world just doesn’t comprehend what the artist is trying to communicate. Or that the outside world sees the work as being so irrelevant that they don’t even stop to really consider it. Been there, done that, as well. Too many times.

There are plenty of other frustrations for the artist, probably too many to laundry list here.  But for the purpose of today’s post let’s focus on the last one listed above, about the artist being frustrated by others not seeing the value of what they are trying to do.

The painting at the top is another early piece, one from early May of 1995. I remember finishing this piece thirty years ago and just not clicking with it in the moment. So, it was set aside and never shown. But like many of those early pieces, I would periodically pull it out and look it over for a while. I began to see more and more in it over the years and came to have a real affection and appreciation for it. It has things in it that excite me now, making me wonder why I couldn’t see them when it was first painted.

The paper on which it was painted listed only the date and the number I had given at the time. No title or note on it.  As a result, I never viewed it with a title in mind, nothing that could inform me of what I was feeling about it at the time. But I recently looked it up in my painting diary from that time, something which, for some unknown reason, I had failed to do in the intervening years. 

There was a title for it, Mountain of Frustration, and a note. The note said it was an odd, color-filled picture and that I was feeling anxious and frustrated on that day. It went on to say that I was disappointed by being rejected for a regional exhibit to which I had submitted my work and was beginning to question my ability. I ended by writing that maybe I was mentally putting myself further down the road than where I truly was at that point.

I had no memory of writing that entry. But reading it made so many things clearer for me about this painting. I could see now how my frustration shaded my opinion of this painting for a number of years until the memory of it faded.

Actually, my first reaction was to laugh at the fact that I was so upset by the rejection in the first place. This was May of 1995, so I had only been showing my work for a few months at that time and had only been painting for a little over a year. I am not sure I had even sold my first painting at that point.

Saying that I was putting myself further down the road was an understatement. Hell, until just a few months before this, I didn’t even know there was a road. 

I can’t remember what painting had been rejected but I am sure the slide I submitted was very poor in quality. I laughed and shook my head at the gall and hubris I had displayed. I thought I had responded like a fool.

But even though I see how ridiculous it was now, I can’t discount the impact of that frustration I was feeling at the time. I looked at it then as a challenge. It was a defiant call to arms and an “Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll show you!” moment.

I’ve had plenty of those over the years but many more so in those early years. As I wrote above, that frustration transformed into a huge motivating force for me, one that has served me well for many years.

It strengthened my resolve and focus. I may not have seen it in this painting then, but I definitely see it now. After having the diary entry jog my memory, this painting, though I have come to appreciate its power over the years, now drips defiance for me.  It was just what needed to be painted in that moment.

It was a bellow into the void. My first real yawp. Many of you know what I mean by that.

Just sorry that it took thirty years to realize it.

A side note:  I completed my next painting after this on the following day. It was titled The Sky Doesn’t Pity and was later that year submitted to another regional exhibition. It was awarded third prize. There was a lot of validation in receiving that small award. Though I don’t put my work up for competitions today, I entered several regional and national competitions in those early years and won a number of prizes, including a couple of Best of Show awards. 

That was probably all a result of the disappointment and frustration I felt then from that first rejection. Maybe Guston was absolutely correct in saying that frustration is one of the great things in art.

Works for me.

 

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Lost Here in America…

February 15, 2026 by redtreetimes

Archaeology: The Future Looms– At West End Gallery

I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. And this belief, which mounts now to the catharsis of knowledge and conviction, is for me–and I think for all of us—-not only our own hope, but America’s everlasting, living dream.

— Thomas Wolfe, You Can’t Go Home Again (1940)

I am not going to say much this morning. These last few paragraphs below conclude the final chapter of the classic novel, You Can’t Go Home Again. They say, with pinpoint clarity, everything that has been churning around in my mind for the past decade or so. Thomas Wolfe wrote this in the year or so before his much too early death in 1938, at the age of 38. It was published posthumously in 1940. His description of what he observed during the considerable time he spent in Germany in the 1930’s and what he was seeing in the rise of hyper-capitalism here in America at that time culminate in the powerful words below.

Nearly ninety years later, Wolfe’s words could easily be applied to what we have been witnessing for the past ten years. It seems like every line describes with undeniable accuracy the here and now.

The warning then is the warning now.

I urge you to read it closely and carefully. If you would rather listen and read along, there is a fine reading of this below. It excludes the final few paragraphs that bring the book to a close. I have included them because they are powerful on their own in a different way. I suggest listening with the Closed Caption (CC) on.

And because it is yet another Sunday– gosh, it seems like they come quicker and quicker every week!— here is a selection for this week’s Sunday Morning Music. This is Old Devils from William Elliott Whitmore. I think that this song echoes Wolfe’s sentiments perfectly since we are dealing with something whose malevolent intent seems to transcend this time. Old as hell itself. As Wolfe wrote to end this section:

For, although he has a thousand familiar and convenient faces, his own true face is old as Hell.

Look about you and see what he has done.

Yes, look about and see what he has done…

I believe that we are lost here in America, but I believe we shall be found. And this belief, which mounts now to the catharsis of knowledge and conviction, is for me–and I think for all of us—-not only our own hope, but America’s everlasting, living dream. I think the life which we have fashioned in America, and which has fashioned us–the forms we made, the cells that grew, the honeycomb that was created–was self-destructive in its nature, and must be destroyed. I think these forms are dying, and must die, just as I know that America and the people in it are deathless, undiscovered, and immortal, and must live.

I think the true discovery of America is before us. I think the true fulfilment of our spirit, of our people, of our mighty and immortal land, is yet to come. I think the true discovery of our own democracy is still before us. And I think that all these things are certain as the morning, as inevitable as noon. I think I speak for most men living when I say that our America is Here, is Now, and beckons on before us, and that this glorious assurance is not only our living hope, but our dream to be accomplished.

I think the enemy is here before us, too. But I think we know the forms and faces of the enemy, and in the knowledge that we know him, and shall meet him, and eventually must conquer him is also our living hope. I think the enemy is here before us with a thousand faces, but I think we know that all his faces wear one mask. I think the enemy is single selfishness and compulsive greed. I think the enemy is blind, but has the brutal power of his blind grab. I do not think the enemy was born yesterday, or that he grew to manhood forty years ago, or that he suffered sickness and collapse in 1929, or that we began without the enemy, and that our vision faltered, that we lost the way, and suddenly were in his camp. I think the enemy is old as Time, and evil as Hell, and that he has been here with us from the beginning. I think he stole our earth from us, destroyed our wealth, and ravaged and despoiled our land. I think he took our people and enslaved them, that he polluted the fountains of our life, took unto himself the rarest treasures of our own possession, took our bread and left us with a crust, and, not content, for the nature of the enemy is insatiate– tried finally to take from us the crust.

I think the enemy comes to us with the face of innocence and says to us:

“I am your friend.”

I think the enemy deceives us with false words and lying phrases, saying:

“See, I am one of you–I am one of your children, your son, your brother, and your friend. Behold how sleek and fat I have become–and all because I am just one of you, and your friend. Behold how rich and powerful I am–and all because I am one of you–shaped in your way of life, of thinking, of accomplishment. What I am, I am because I am one of you, your humble brother and your friend. Behold,” cries Enemy, “the man I am, the man I have become, the thing I have accomplished–and reflect. Will you destroy this thing? I assure you that it is the most precious thing you have. It is yourselves, the projection of each of you, the triumph of your individual lives, the thing that is rooted in your blood, and native to your stock, and inherent in the traditions of America. It is the thing that all of you may hope to be,” says Enemy, “for”–humbly–“am I not just one of you? Am I not just your brother and your son? Am I not the living image of what each of you may hope to be, would wish to be, would desire for his own son? Would you destroy this glorious incarnation of your own heroic self? If you do, then,” says Enemy, “you destroy yourselves–you kill the thing that is most gloriously American, and in so killing, kill yourselves.”

He lies! And now we know he lies! He is not gloriously, or in any other way, ourselves. He is not our friend, our son, our brother. And he is not American! For, although he has a thousand familiar and convenient faces, his own true face is old as Hell.

Look about you and see what he has done.

************

 

Dear Fox, old friend, thus we have come to the end of the road that we were to go together. My tale is finished—and so farewell.

But before I go, I have just one more thing to tell you:

Something has spoken to me in the night, burning the tapers of the waning year; something has spoken in the night, and told me I shall die, I know not where. Saying: 

“To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth-

“—Whereon the pillars of this earth are founded, toward which the conscience of the world is tending—a wind is rising, and the rivers flow.”

 

 

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If Two Trees Fall in a Forest…

February 14, 2026 by redtreetimes

All Embracing– At West End Gallery

There must be some other possibility than death or lifelong penance … some meeting, some intersection of lines; and some cowardly, hopeful geometer in my brain tells me it is the angle at which two lines prop each other up, the leaning-together from the vertical which produces the false arch. For lack of a keystone, the false arch may be as much as one can expect in this life. Only the very lucky discover the keystone.

― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose (1971)

The lines above from the 1972 Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Angle of Repose, from the late Wallace Stegner really jumped out at me this morning. To be honest, I haven’t read the book so can’t speak to its context. I read a summary that described its theme, described by its title, as a metaphor for finding balance between personal ambition and contentment. His description of this concept being like two vertical lines tipping together so that they meet and prop each other up to create a self-supporting false arch just seemed like the perfect imagery for today, Valentine’s Day.

Love, like every lasting relationship including the inner one we maintain between our hopes and reality, depends on this arch. I hesitate to use the word “false” though I understand it is in reference to the distinction between “true” and “false” arches.

“True” arches are carefully designed and slowly built, having angled stones and a keystone at its apex that sturdily binds it all together. It is built to last.  “False” arches that may have the appearance and serve the same purpose are more organic, not really designed or constructed so much as they just happen, often haphazardly and by sheer coincidence of time, place, and circumstance.

Two trees falling against one another in the forest, for example.

Or maybe even two trees that grow together and eventually seem almost as one, a la the trees in my Baucis and Philemon based paintings such as the example at the top.

I’ve been part of such a false arch for a very, very long time. As a result, Valentine’s Day takes on a different look for me. Though it still maintains a romantic aspect, it is now more about a deeper recognition and appreciation of all the many aspects that make up that tree that somehow fell my way all so many years ago to create the false arch that has somehow, often against all odds, survived.

Actually, I should say when my tree came to rest against the strength that is her tree.

Without that support, I would most certainly have fallen all the way to the forest floor.

Many times. I have always existed as a pretty precarious tree, after all. Even in my sapling days.

As the Stegner lines above point out, this type of false arch might be as much as one can expect in this life. I certainly couldn’t ask for anything more.

Here’s one of my favorite Rickie Lee Jones songs, one that seems fit for this day and post. This is We Belong Together, from her 1981 album, Pirates. Though this album was critically acclaimed when it came out, I don’t know how it has aged through the years or how it is viewed by a younger audience nowadays. I have always thought it as a classic, with its striking cover photo from the great French photographer Brassai who has been featured here before, and the many songs that have stuck with me for forty-five years now.

There’s an angle of repose in there somewhere…

This post ran several years ago. I rewrote it a bit, adding and subtracting here and there, but its sentiment holds true for this Valentine’s Day in this forest.

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Ain’t Nobody’s Business…

February 13, 2026 by redtreetimes

Airs of Independence– At West End Gallery

He alone is great and happy who fills his own station of independence, and has neither to command nor to obey.

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Götz von Berlichingen (1773)

 

I can identify with this line from Goethe’s 1773 play. It expresses one of the better aspects of what I consider success to be. It’s dwells beyond money, belongings, real estate, fame or celebrity. Those things are sometimes actually hindrances to the kind of success I am talking about here. An excessive need for those things often creates a cage from which one cannot easily escape.

The success of which I speak is that which comes in achieving a level of independence where you can speak, think, and express yourself freely.

The type of success where you refuse to bossed or pushed around by others and have no need or desire to do so to others. You are at nobody’s beck and call, and no one is at yours.

The type where you define the what, where, when, how, and why of work and leisure for yourself.

The type of success where you have no need to explain anything to anyone but yourself. Well, and your most significant success other.

Reading this just now, I realized that this could in many ways describe a hobo, if there is still such a person. And maybe there is a certain degree of success in the independence of that lifestyle. It might not fall under your definition but under their definition it might well represent the pinnacle of success. Their ability to come and go as they please, to be beholden to no one, and to live by their own wits is something many of us seek in other forms.

I could go on with my list but I think you can fill in the blanks on this definition of success at this point. I have sometimes feel close to achieving this type of success. Actually, there are short periods of time where I am convinced of it.

But it’s a fleeting feeling. I find myself speaking and writing a little more guardedly than I would if I had the type of success that allowed me to be totally free. All too often I find myself feeling the need to explain or do things that I would rather not do.

But in those moments when I can break away from all these hindrances, I feel truly free. More successful than any amount of earthly wealth could provide for me. That is a pretty damn good feeling.

The kind of success I am willing to chase.

A little info about the Goethe play referenced at the top, which made me laugh early this morning. The 1773 play is about the life and exploits of the German adventurer/mercenary/poet Götz von Berlichingen, a colorful character who lived, feuded, fought, and killed from 1480 to 1562. Early in his career he lost his right hand and lower arm to a cannon blast and wore iron prosthetics for the rest of his life. It didn’t seem to hinder him much.

Götz von Berlichingen, both the man and the play, are best known for his so-called Swabian Salute. In response to being asked to surrender during one conflict, he is reported to have said, translated from Goethe’s words:

Me, surrender! At mercy! With whom do you speak? Am I a robber! Tell your captain that for His Imperial Majesty, I have, as always, due respect. But he, tell him that, he can lick my arse!

A surrounded soldier with an iron hand telling his opponent in the superior position to kiss his ass might well be the definition of a successfully free soul.

Here’s a tune in the same vein. This is the wonderful Diana Reeves adding her flair to the blues standard Ain’t Nobody’s Business (If I Do). Plain good stuff.

Götz von Berlichingen could identify with this tune.

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A Good Kick in the Teeth

February 12, 2026 by redtreetimes

Dawn’s Return–At West End Gallery

 

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

–Walt Disney, The Story of Walt Disney (1957)

 

As someone who has had their teeth knocked out several times, literally and figuratively, I might want to disagree with Walt Disney here. But I get the gist of what he is saying. It is actually something that I have believed for a long time now, that we are strengthened by the obstacles and setbacks we face.

Once you know that you can bounce back from adversity it becomes easier to tackle whatever the next roadblock might be.

I am not going into a long spiel on the subject this morning. In the wake of yesterday’s Congressional hearing with the Attorney General, I was originally going to write about what is taking place in the country. It would have been long and angry.

But I just couldn’t do it this morning. Wanted to keep my blood pressure down a bit this morning. Writing a post about the many terrible things that are simultaneously taking place here would definitely shoot it sky high.

I would most likely end up looking like a Disney character whose head turns into a red-faced tea kettle with steam streaming out both ears.

Trying to stay away from getting into specifics that might trigger this tea kettle effect, I will point out that this current situation is our collective stumbling block right now.

It is a large and treacherous mountain placed in our path to the promise so many of us once saw and still see for this country. To get to the other side will require, as is the case when encountering any obstacle, a summoning of our collective strength and willpower.

It’s going to be difficult, but it is not an impossible task. Almost all obstacles can be overcome with diligence. tenacity, and well-considered action.

We’re going to lose a few teeth along the way. But take it from someone who knows, it will be worth the sacrifice in order to get over that mountain. It will make getting to the other side all the sweeter.

Here’s a song that very much sums up this thought. Here’s a rousing version of the gospel classic Lord Don’t Move That Mountain that was popularized by the great Mahalia Jackson in the late 1950’s. This is a performance from Jacob Lusk, who I featured recently with song performed with Moby, with Jools Holland on piano. I am throwing in Jacob’s great and fun version of Bennie and the Jets at the bottom for good measure. It took place at the 2024 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song concert honoring Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

The painting at the top, Dawn’s Return, doesn’t easily fit in here this morning. I just see a lot of things in it for myself and wanted to share it again.

Maybe its dawn is on the other side of the mountain?

Maybe.

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Right Place Wrong Time?

February 11, 2026 by redtreetimes

Harmony in Blue and Green— At West End Gallery

 

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation: we do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have these because we have acted rightly; ‘these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions‘; we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit: ‘the good of man is a working of the soul in the way of excellence in a complete life… for as it is not one swallow or one fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy’.

–Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (1926)

 

I recently came across the passage at the top from the esteemed historian/philosopher Will Durant. I was taken by hos words which very much aligned with one part of yesterday’s post that stated that we become what we say and do. Durant stressed the repetition required to create habit in our virtue and excellence.

Good stuff. Practical and applicable to most people. And the practice of becoming and being an artist. I’ve often felt that one of my strengths is my willingness– or perhaps it’s compulsion– to work. I would like to believe that this habit I have created shows itself in some small degree of excellence.

While reading the article that contained this passage from Durant, I noticed there was an attached note pointing out that the passage’s quoted phrase ‘these virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions were taken from the Nicomachean Ethics written by Aristotle around 350 B.C.E. I decided to investigate a bit further to see the context of Aristotle’s words. This further digging is now part of my writing habit. Not sure any excellence has come of it yet.

I was interested in what Aristotle wrote on this subject. My concise reading of the chapter containing the phrase above is that all art has a level of goodness contained within itself. This applies even if it is performed or created by those lacking goodness and virtue. The character of the work only becomes virtuous when the work is created with conscious intent by a virtuous artist of firm and unchanging character.

This made me wonder if the qualities that I sense in my work were the inherent goodness already present in it or did they reflect my character and whatever goodness I might have contributed to the work? Were my feelings I experienced from seeing the work I created actually part of the work? Or was any character and virtue the work possessed its alone?

This created quite a quandary in my mind. It made me think of a conversation I had with a good friend recently where I was briefly talking about the new work created in this past year, of which the piece at the top is an example. I was describing to my friend the disappointment I felt in the general reception to this work. I said that I saw something in the work from this time that felt as though it might one day be important and definitive in the larger context of my work.

Well, if there ever is such a thing as the larger context of my work. That’s out of my hands.

But I felt that this work was created with great intent and was truly reflective of my character and beliefs. It had a passion in it that was instantly apparent to me. It deserved to be created and seen.

Of course, that is my personal opinion. That can often be too close or biased in judging one’s own work. Maybe the passion and depth I sensed didn’t come through in the inherent goodness of the work? Or perhaps that which I perceived then as goodness and virtue is not that exactly? Maybe much less?

Or maybe what I was seeing was real and present in the work but was appearing in the wrong time and place?

I don’t know and may never know. That’s something you have to accept as an artist. You never know how your work, no matter how passionate you are about it, will be received. Now or in the future. You create on your own faith and belief in what you do, over and over again, with the hope that, as Durant points out, excellence will one day be achieved through this habituation.

You just do what you do and let the chips fall where they may. Now and in the future.

As I said, maybe the work was in the right place at the wrong time. Here’s the late and ever flamboyant Dr. John with a song that hits this nail on the head. This is a performance from the Midnight Special in 1973 of his Right Place Wrong Time with the Doc in full Night Tripper regalia.

A blast from the past. Well, my past, at least. You got your own past to work from, kids.

Now get out of here before I turn surly.

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No purpose but what we made…

February 10, 2026 by redtreetimes

The Restless Seeker– At West End Gallery

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

— This is what was bequeathed us, Gregory Orr (b. 1947)

 

I posted the poem and its accompanying animation, shown at the bottom of the page, about five years ago. It was written by American poet Gregory Orr and the two lines above from it made me think about the nature of both meaning and purpose, both things that I discuss here on a fairly regular basis. I don’t know why it seems like such an important subject to me.

Maybe I am trying to find justification for my own existence and the work I do? Let’s leave that for another day and move on.

We often speak of finding meaning and purpose in our lives but is it something to be found? It seems as though that it would be a difficult task to find something when you have no idea what you’re seeking.

Perhaps the seeking truly begins when we form an image or loose definition, even if it is on a subconscious level, of what values we would want to appear as part of the meaning and purpose of our life, should we ever stumble upon it. Once there is this vague conception in our mind of our desired purpose, maybe we then begin to create it.

Maybe what we believe is seeking is actually more or less gathering those bit and pieces of whatever makes up our individual meaning and purpose then assembling them in a form that comes near in its representation of that vague conception deep in our mind.

Using the painting at the top, The Restless Seeker, as an analogy, perhaps the boat does not represent a search for purpose or meaning. Maybe the boat itself is purpose and meaning, something I have constructed in order to navigate my way through this life?

As always, I can’t say for sure. But it sounds good at the moment.

The idea that our thoughts and desires form what we become is not a new idea, of course. It harkens back at least to the Buddha when he is believed to have stated:

The thought manifests as the word;

The word manifests as the deed;

The deed develops into habit;

And habit hardens into character;

So watch the thought and its ways with care,

And let it spring from love

Born out of concern for all beings…

As the shadow follows the body,

As we think, so we become.

Or to put it more concisely: Garbage in, garbage out.

As I wrote above, we structure our desired purpose on our own values. They might be traits we have observed and admired in others. Or on the set of morals and ethics we have developed, some handed down to us from our upbringing, and some obtained through our earliest experiences.

Perhaps some are even things we find lacking in ourselves and in the world around us?

I don’t know. Obviously.

It’s a difficult thing on which to put a single definition, especially before six in the morning. Even more difficult since every life has its own distinct meaning and purpose. My purpose and meaning is not yours and vice versa.

One size does not fit all.

As it should be.

I am just blabbing on in all directions at this point. Maybe that’s my purpose? Sounds about right…

Let’s end this with the poem and animated reading from Gregory Orr.

This is what was bequeathed us

This is what was bequeathed us:
This earth the beloved left
And, leaving,
Left to us.

No other world
But this one:
Willows and the river
And the factory
With its black smokestacks.

No other shore, only this bank
On which the living gather.

No meaning but what we find here.
No purpose but what we make.

That, and the beloved’s clear instructions:
Turn me into song; sing me awake.

–Gregory Orr (b. 1947)

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A Look Back: Camp

February 9, 2026 by redtreetimes

Camp – January 1995

The concentration camps were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future.

–Robert Capa, Slightly Out of Focus (1947)

Robert Capa is considered by many to be the greatest combat photographer. The only civilian photographer to land with the troops on Omaha Beach on D-Day, Capa captured the horrors of war around the world throughout the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. His life ended in 1954 after stepping on a landmine in Vietnam.

The passage above from his 1947 memoir was written about the final days of WWII as the Allied troops swept through a nearly defeated Germany.  At this point, he observed that the conflict there had changed from, as he put it, a shooting war into a looting war. Troops searched for souvenirs such as Lugers and cameras in the clean little villages they encountered going from the Rhine to the Oder. They also sought and found plenty   German frauleins willing to fraternize with them.

Capa noted that the soldiers who had been the liberators of the concentration camps–Dachau, Belsen, and Buchenwald— were the only troops who refused to fraternize with the frauleins. The scenes they witnessed in those would not allow them to suddenly embrace those people who had witnessed and turned a blind eye to such horror.

The passage above is just a quick observation from Capa about how though the flood of images emerging from those places shocked and horrified people in the moment, they might also someday serve to dull our response to similar images in the future.

What was once thought to be unimaginable was now imaginable with tangible evidence of the dark potential within all humans.

That brings us to the early painting I am featuring today. It was painted on January 11, 1995 and has the title Camp scrawled at the bottom of the sheet of watercolor paper on which it was painted. In the entry in my painting diary for this piece on that day, I wrote: Very dark. Concentration camp, remnant of dreams past. Hard to critique this objectively.

It is still hard to critique this piece.

It doesn’t really matter how I see it in qualitative terms, whether it’s a good or bad painting. I just don’t care. Seeing it always affects me in some deep, dark spot that I don’t really know in myself. Certainly not in this life. But it’s in there and it still emerges at certain times to let me know it is there, that it occupies a space in me.

It’s hard to even write superficial observations about what I mean here. I don’t know why it came about at that time in 1995, what compelled me to create it. It may have been something as simple as a color or combination of colors in it that sparked something to come out of that deep, dark spot. Something that perhaps sparked a flash of an image in that part of me that is connected to our collective memory.

I write about this painting today because it has been on my mind in recent times. It began to emerge several years ago when I first hear about private for-profit prisons. That idea just horrified me. A business whose sole purpose was to profit from keeping as many people imprisoned for as long as possible is fraught with the potential for abuse. And worse.

Then as these detention centers have become to pop up around the country, ostensibly to hold illegal immigrants for deportation, this image has begun to haunt me more and more. Especially as many the detained are shown to be not criminal nor threats to us. Just people looking for a better life who are swept up by masked men in combat gear looking for a monetary bonus for their cruelty.

It’s not a coincidence that this potential has arisen now. It’s been over 80 years since the end of WWII. Most of the witnesses, the survivors and liberators of the concentration camps, are dead. And though the images from those camps still inspire feeling of horror within us, they seem far removed now. Our memory has faded, replaced with the hubris of thinking it can’t happen to us here.

It now feels like we have foolishly allowed ourselves to be led to the top of an exceedingly slippery slope that we will soon find ourselves whooshing down.

And at the bottom there waits a horror that we once knew and were once shocked and horrified by its very existence. Those German farmers and villagers in the Rhine Valley, along with those fraternizing frauleins, probably once thought that the horrors that had taken place in their name could ever happen.

Unimaginable.

But it did happen. And it is now easily imaginable. And therefore possible.

That’s the power in this image for me. Then and now.

Here’s the great Itzhak Perlman playing the Schindler’s List Theme, composed by John Williams. I know it’s a bit on the nose but for a subject like this, one with such weight, that is what is required.

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the white album

February 8, 2026 by redtreetimes

Inner Sanctum    (2002)

We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy will lead the children into the sea. The naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the sixteenth floor is a victim of accidie, or the naked woman is an exhibitionist, and it would be “interesting” to know which. We tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin or is about to register a political protest or is about to be, the Aristophanic view, snatched back to the human condition by the fireman in priest’s clothing just visible in the window behind her, the one smiling at the telephoto lens. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas” with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

Or at least we do for a while. I am talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the stories I had ever told myself, a common condition but one I found troubling.

–Joan Didion, The White Album (1979)

We tell ourselves stories in order to live…

This short opening sentence from the Joan Didion essay, The White Album, says so much about how we put together our pasts, our stories and myths, and all our perceptions of it all in a way that brings makes small degree of sense to it all. As she writes, we try to create a narrative out of disparate bits and pieces that somehow makes our life worth living or at least gives a small degree of meaning to it.

It’s what we do to try to make sense of an often-senseless world.

It is a process of synthesis in which we all take part, usually without even recognizing the process. For writers and artists, the process comes closer to the surface of our consciousness. Every work is created out of this synthesization of all we know and experience. It is an internal weighing of all these things, determining what is important and what is trivial. Sifting through a lifetime trying to separate the meaningful from the meaningless. The beautiful from the ugly.

I sometimes think that a good work is that which allows a bit of all of these things through. The good with the bad. The dark with the light.

They are, after all, part of those stories we tell ourselves. The stories that shaped us, that informed how we came to view the world.

I could go on and on. Probably wouldn’t say anything more than what I’ve already said. And I don’t even know why I wrote what I did so far. That sentence, those simple eight words, from Didion spark so many thoughts about how I see the mythology of self that we maintain and present to the world as ourselves and in our creations.

There’s a lot of meat left on that bone which we could keep chewing on but let’s just leave it there for this morning.

Let’s have a tune. It is Sunday Morning and there is always a song on these mornings. Let’s go with a song from the Beatles’ White Album. It only seems right, given Didion’s use of that title for her essay and the book of essays in which it was contained. The album was in heavy rotation when I was 10 or 11 and is now part of those stories which show up in my work. This is a version of Dear Prudence that is an impromptu performance from two powerful vocalists, Haley Reinhart and Morgan James, who both came to prominence with Postmodern Jukebox.

The painting at the top is a piece that has been hanging in my studio for at least 20 years. Inner Sanctum is part of a group of paintings that were created in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. My work at that time took on a much darker tone with deeper blues and more saturation of color over a black base. It was a departure from my prior work and became what I call my Dark Work. It very much reflects the struggle in maintaining those stories we tell ourselves in order to live.

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Obvious Child

February 7, 2026 by redtreetimes

Fiddler’s Moon--At West End Gallery

Well I’m accustomed to a smoother ride
Or maybe I’m a dog that’s lost his bite
I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more
I don’t expect to sleep the night
Some people say a lie is just a lie
But I say the cross is in the ballpark
Why deny the obvious child?

— Paul Simon, Obvious Child

I spent way too much time on a post this morning that will probably stay forever locked in my drafts file. Just a little too much of too many things. Let’s just move on to something else on this bitter cold and extremely windy morning. The trees were frantically squeaking and squealing in their ancient voices to one another as I crossed through the woods to the studio. There’s something in their language that I find comforting on such mornings even as I try to hurry to get out of the frigid temps and into the warm studio.

Thanks to everyone who made their way through the falling snow to the West End Gallery last night for the opening reception of their 32nd annual Little Gems exhibit. As is always the case with this show, it was a great turnout and the response to the work in the show has been phenomenal. It was great catching up with so many folks last night. It made for a wonderful ending to a long day.

Many, many thanks to everyone who came out last night. If you were looking to chat a bit and found that I left before you got there, I apologize. As I said, it was a long and tiring day yesterday. The hormone therapy has hit me pretty hard this past week and I am pretty wiped out most days around the time the reception began. Just glad to be there for even a short time, however.

Let’s just leave it at that this morning and wrap things up with a song from the Grammy-winning Americana/Roots group I’m With Her. This is their beautiful cover of the Paul Simon song Obvious Child from the Colbert show earlier in the week. I just love this performance and find it strikes so many chords in me in so many ways.

I’ve been listening to and enjoying this song for a long time but never took the time to consider some of the lyrics. Like many folks, you just know the words and sing them without even understanding what they mean. For example, the cross is in the ballpark in this song. I have sung along to this for 35 years now and never gave that phrase a second thought. It means that at a certain point, we understand what crosses, what obligations and responsibilities, are ours to bear and realize they are in our ballpark, that we can handle the load. It’s a glad acceptance of the challenges we face.

Sorry that I missed that for all those years. I just looked out the window in the first light of the day, and big gust of wind blew up a huge swirling cloud of icy snow crystals.

Sorry to kick you out into that but it has to be done. Now, leave or I will call security.

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