Redtree Times

The Call of Wonder– At West End Gallery

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.

–Novalis. as quoted in Bildung in Early German Romanticism by Frederick C. Beiser

There are two ways of looking at my paintings for me. During the process, I often view it as an assemblage of parts, a series of decisions to be made and obstacles to overcome. It feels very much like it is part of me at that point, like I hold all the cards and determine where it will go and what it will inevitably be. I feel a bit like a mechanic or a surgeon in that time.

But there is a point just after it reaches completion where the piece stumbles to its feet and moves away from on its own volition. It has its own power, its own forward-moving force and I am left powerless to influence it at that point. I no longer see it as parts or pieces to be adjusted.

It is whole and seems to only be mine in only a familiar way. It might be like a parent looking at their child and seeing the resemblance but not understanding how and why the child does what it does as it grows away from them.

I don’t mean that in a negative way though I guess it could be taken that way. I was thinking of a sort of gratification in seeing their child do and say things they never imagined being possible for themselves. And doing it with a grace and beauty that they don’t recognize in themself.

It is a moment that is both prideful and somewhat sad when they realize that they have created something that they will never be themself, something that exceeds their whole.

I thought of this the other morning while doing my daily workout with a number of newly framed paintings within my sight. Only days before some of them had still been just parts and pieces, still problematic and with little life. They were still toddlers, dependent on me.

Yet now I was looking at them, and they felt whole and away from me. I recognized them as mine in that moment, could see the familial resemblance. But I could also see that they had their own things to say, their own feelings to express. Things out of my control. A transformation had taken place hey were grown now, no longer babes.

It was a moment that caught me off guard. I have spoken of the work taking on its own life many times before but, in that instant, this feeling seemed much more palpable and concrete.

It created a sense of wonder in me.

And when that happens, that is a good day…

A little short on time today. I have some things that need to be done health-wise early this morning so I am sharing the post above from back in 2016. It’s been edited a bit with a recent favorite painting and the passage from Novalis added. The song below, A Sense of Wonder from Van Morrison was part of the original post. I think it all comes together pretty well. One man’s opinion…

Boxed In, 2019

You cannot fight unreason, and as these dead multitudes will tell you — are telling you right now — certitude is the enemy.

–Steven Erikson, The Bonehunters (2006)

I wasn’t going to write anything this morning. Hadn’t planned to comment on the insanity of last night’s state of the union from our mad king. I couldn’t watch it. Thankfully, I was asleep before the madness began.

Then this morning I came across this short passage from a book in The Malazan Book of the Fallen, the ten-book epic fantasy series from Steven Erikson. I haven’t read the series nor was I even aware of it but the sentiment contains what I consider to be a universal truth, that certitude is our real enemy and that you cannot argue with the unreason in people brought on by such certainty.

I am not going to go on a long spiel here. I have discussed certainty and uncertainty here before, pointing out that seeing absolute certainty in anyone, even myself, instantly raises the suspicion that it might only serve as a cover for the instability of the argument on which that certainty is based.

I am never more doubtful of myself than when I am certain I am right.

That line could send us down a long and twisting rabbit hole but let’s stay focused on whatever the hell I think I am trying to say here this morning. And that is, based on what I have read about and seen from last night’s address is that we are dealing with a governing party that is absolute in the certainty of their fealty to the mad king and are unwilling to compromise or listen to reason of any sort.

In fact, at this point, I don’t think they have a mission statement for their governance that would be any way in the best interest for a majority of this country’s citizens. I get the feeling that their mission is to get to a point where they can incarcerate, expel, or kill anyone who opposes them with total impunity.

They no longer feel the need to find common ground, no longer see their opposition as even being American.

No, the see the majority of the citizenry as being the Other. They will not accept coexistence with this Other, only as someone to be dominated and subjugated.

That is the certitude which they embrace without rhyme or reason.

That is my personal view on this. I would never want to say I am certain of this belief. In fact, I keep trying to find evidence of the flaw in my thinking on this. And every day provides even less proof than the day before that this is not their ultimate goal.

It just seems that it has come down to, like the title of the old Pink Floyd song, Us and Them. Unless we conform to their will and ways, we will always remain the Them to their Us, never the We that encompasses us all.

Okay, I had my say. Sorry, but it had to be said, if only for my own well-being. I am literally sick and tired this morning. And frustrated. Writing this relieves some of that frustration. It’s much more productive manner than punching the wall. I learned that painful lesson long ago though sometimes I forget.

You better get out of here. I might start swinging any time now.

Here’s Pink Floyd and Us and Them from their landmark album Dark Side of the Moon.

I am the bond I weave with others.

— Albert Jacquard (1925-2013)

I received a small package yesterday postmarked from Italy. Castel Gandolfo, specifically which is, according to Wikipedia, a scenic town and municipality in Italy’s Alban Hills, located about 25 km southeast of Rome, best known as the historic summer residence of the Pope. Situated overlooking Lake Albano, the town features the 17th-century Apostolic Palace, the Barberini Gardens, and the Vatican Observatory.

It is also home to the Apostoline Sisters, an order of nuns whose specific mission is in helping young people find a path in this world through spiritual and vocational training, with the idea that every life is unique and every vocation important because, according to their website, Every vocation is never for oneself, it is always a task, a mission for the good of all.

That’s a thought I have always held in my mind, that there is dignity and purpose to be found in everyone and every job. So, when the Sisters reached out to me this past year to ask for permission to use two of my paintings for their annual desk calendar that they sell, along with other items, in order to raise funds for their mission which includes a vocational school there in Castel Gandolfo, I was honored and pleased to give my permission.

It’s a great little desk calendar whose overall theme is asked in a question gracing its cover: Under these skies, where are you? Each month’s image accompanied by an appropriate quote and a list of the feast days for that month. The first of my paintings chosen is for this month, February, and carries the title Creo Legami which translates to I create connections.

I like that.

It also includes the quote above that supplied the calendar page’s title from the late French geneticist/essayist Albert Jacquard. I love the quote they chose not only because it refers to the Baucis & Philemon painting accompanying it but because it also beautifully sums up how I viewed much of my work from the past year, especially those with the tangles that formed their skies.

I wasn’t aware of Jacquard but I can see why his words were chosen. He was a leader in genetic research which sounds ominous in itself. However, he devoted himself as a humanist to the betterment of the human condition through his advocacy for the homeless and illegal immigrants of France. He had an interesting quote about his research which resonated with me as someone who asks a lot of questions but offers few, if any, answers:

I have no solution: I don’t intend to build the society of tomorrow. I just want to show that it must not resemble the society of today.

I can certainly relate to that. I can’t say what our future holds or even what it should be. That is well beyond my limited abilities and understanding. But I do know what it should not and cannot be.

Here’s an absolute favorite song that I haven’t shared here in a while that echoes in these last few paragraphs. This is A Change is Gonna Come from the immortal Sam Cooke, a song that was written by Cooke at the height of the civil rights struggle in response to his arrest in Louisiana after protesting a Holiday Inn refusing to honor his reservations at that hotel.

And to think that there are some who would have us return to that time. That is a future we cannot accept.

Io sono legami che intreccio con gli altri…

PS: I also have another painting in this calendar for the month of October. I will share it at that time.

In Voyages Past (2006) — Coming to West End Gallery

When my life is over, my time has run out
My friends and my loved ones, I’ll leave them no doubt (leave them no doubt)
But one thing’s for certain when it comes my time
I’ll leave this old world with a satisfied mind

—Satisfied Mind, Red Hayes &  Jack Rhodes (1954)

We’ve talked about artistic satisfaction, or should I say dissatisfaction, in recent days. I am ending this week with a song for this Sunday Morning Music that is about a different sort of satisfaction– the satisfied mind. To my way of thinking, the artist can view their work with dissatisfaction but can still find and maintain a satisfied mind.

That seems contradictory, doesn’t it?

Maybe it is. But I believe not finding that ultimate and elusive satisfaction in your work doesn’t preclude the artist from finding satisfaction in their life and in their mind. After all, just being able to seek that artistic satisfaction, as maddening as the search sometimes seems, is a great privilege that most folks don’t experience in their life.

But it is an internal search. So long as the artist finds deeper levels of love and understanding, both in the giving and receiving of both, in their outer world, satisfaction is indeed within reach. It is possible.

I have often struggled with that inner artistic satisfaction and probably even more in finding a place where my mind feels satisfied. But as the years have passed, I am finding myself with that satisfied mind more and more often. It often comes in simply stopping and looking at the sky. In running my hand down the back of one of the cats. As I look out the window now, simply watching the snow fall brings a great sense of satisfaction.

I am alive. I have love. I have friendship. What more do I need to feel satisfied?

This week’s song is Satisfied Mind performed by the great Mavis Staples from her most recent album. She is the latest in a long, long line of artists who have recorded this song since it was written in 1954. It is considered a country music song and was written by Joe “Red” Hayes and Jack Rhodes. Hayes explained the origin of the song in an interview: “The song came from my mother. Everything in the song are things I heard her say over the years. I put a lot of thought into the song before I came up with the title. One day my father-in-law asked me who I thought the richest man in the world was, and I mentioned some names. He said, ‘You’re wrong; it is the man with a satisfied mind.'”

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?

The painting shown here is a bit of an anomaly. It was painted as one of the pieces in my Outlaws series from 2006, but I never felt that this character truly fit outlaw as I was defining it with my work.  I am always intrigued by this piece. He has always been a bit of an enigma to me, as though he is carrying untold secrets from a distant past within, yet finding his way to some degree of satisfaction in the present.

Isn’t that how most of us live? Maybe he’s not as much of an enigma as I thought. I am trying to get this piece, called In Voyages Past, ready to go the West End Gallery as part of a small supplemental group for their Little Gems show. It’s been slow going since both Cheri and I now still are feeling the effects of covid.

Even so, my mind is satisfied this morning. And that’s all I can ask.

Beguiled– At West End Gallery

The greatest things she ever said to me was in 1943 after the opening of Oklahoma!, when I had unexpected, flamboyant success for a work I thought was only fair, after years of neglect for work that I thought was fine. I was bewildered and worried that my entire scale of values was untrustworthy. I talked to Martha. I remember the conversation well. It was in a Schrafft’s restaurant over a soda. I confessed that I had a burning desire to be excellent, but no faith that I could be.

Martha said to me, very quietly: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. As for you, Agnes, you have so far used about one-third of your talent.”

“But,” I said, “when I see my work I take for granted what other people value in it. I see only its ineptitude, inorganic flaws, and crudities. I am not pleased or satisfied.”

“No artist is pleased.”

“But then there is no satisfaction?”

“No satisfaction whatever at any time,” she cried out passionately. “There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”

— Agnes de Mille in her book Martha: The Life and Work of Martha Graham (1991)

This is a kind of a follow-up to yesterday’s post, albeit a shorter one. Well, I hope it’s shorter. I love the passage above the 1943 conversation between the legendary choreographers Martha Graham and Agnes de Mille and felt that it needed to be attached to yesterday’s post and to the Look Back post earlier this work featuring an early painting that greatly frustrated me when it was painted.

I admittedly know diddlysquat about dance but am always entranced by Graham’s musings on art. Like most of her writings and quoted words, this particular tidbit seemed filled with both wisdom and insight that applies to artists in any field. And I would think that the feelings of uncertainty and frustration with her work that de Mille expresses will ring true for most artists as well. I know them all too well.

Graham’s admonition to de Mille that she should not expect to find satisfaction, only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others might seem deflating at first blush. However, for someone who keeps expecting to find satisfaction only to find it absolutely elusive, the truth in this statement rings clear and loud.

I know that queer divine dissatisfaction and blessed unrest of which Graham speaks. It has been a constant marching partner for me for decades now. It is to the point that when I feel any satisfaction, I begin to get antsy with suspicions that I had hoodwinked myself into believing satisfaction is achievable or even desirable as an artist.

Oh, I use the term satisfaction every so often for some of my work when a piece has achieved all the potential it has within it. But that satisfaction is mighty limited to that piece and its moment. In fact, that satisfaction it offers only serves to increase my own overall dissatisfaction. When I see that a piece has reached its potential I begin to wonder why I had set limits on it in the first place.

Shouldn’t it have been meant to be more, to be better than it is?

Of course, I don’t know that I would be able to recognize if a piece exceeded that initial satisfaction, which I have now come to view as Fool’s Gold. Don’t know if could tell a gold nugget from a mere rock.

It’s a weird but wonderful way to live, looking for something you hope you never find. Paradoxically, there is something quite satisfying in it once you have come to terms with all the uncertainty and dissatisfaction that is all part of the package.

So, this morning, like most mornings, I find myself deeply dissatisfied which carries its own distinct and unusual satisfaction.

Does this make sense? Does it sound maddening?

It should. That’s the horror and glory of art.

Thanks for letting me blather a bit, to blurt out whatever comes to mind every morning. Without it, I might begin to feel a little too satisfied.

And we can’t have that, can we?

Okay, here’s the inevitable song for this morning. It can only be the rock classic I Can’t Get No (Satisfaction) from the Rolling Stones, right? Well, you’re half right. It may seem sacrilege for some to play a cover of that song, but I sometimes like to share covers of well-known songs, especially those covers that offer a distinct alternate take on the original. This acoustic version from South African singer/songwriter Alice Phoebe Lou is one of those unique alternate takes. The idea of this song without its signature and universally recognized guitar riff seems unthinkable but she somehow makes it work.

I am almost satisfied…

Pondering Blue- At West End Gallery

How do our lives ravel out into the no-wind, no-sound, the weary gestures wearily recapitulant: echoes of old compulsions with no-hand on no-string: in sunset we fall into furious attitudes, dead gestures of dolls.

–William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930)

I think it’s been about three months since I missed a day with this blog thing. Even on the days when I share an older post, I usually spend too much time in editing the old post, correcting the sometimes many missed grammatical and punctuation errors in the original and adding or subtracting content.

It verges on compulsion at this point.

And this compulsion appears to be in hyper-drive in recent months. Not only am I posting more, but they seem to be much longer, I didn’t really notice at first, but it recently became more obvious, even to my often-oblivious self, that there seems to be a progression in the length and frequency of the posts.

I had to ask myself if this was just a reaction to the recognition of my own mortality. Was my own endpoint appearing much closer on the horizon now? Was this making me furiously produce something– words, images, thoughts, songs, whatever– that would mark and, in some way, extend my time here, like a pine tree under stress producing more pinecones?

I have probably written some of this here before. I tend to overwrite, overtalk, over explain when I am in a state of anxiety so there’s a good chance that some of this has come up over the nearly 18 years I have been doing this blog.

When I think about how long I have been doing this blog and how it feels like its volume has increased in recent times, I have to ask myself: Does it have any meaning or serve any real purpose outside of temporarily quelling my anxieties?

Does it authentically express anything or is it merely empty words, images, and sounds pointlessly filling a void?

I probably shouldn’t use the word authentically. Few, if any, of my thoughts and ideas and even my work are totally original. They are all built on a foundation created by those thinkers and artists and writers who came before me. I am just a regurgitator, a synthesizer, who absorbs as much as will fit in the much too limited space of my mind then tries to put it into some order that makes sense to me, outwardly re-expressing it in my work and words.

My only authenticity comes the voice with which I express this synthesization.

And even that may have traces of mimicry in it to some.

The only c0nsolation I take from this is that this holds true for all artists, but for those rare geniuses who change our way of seeing, hearing, and thinking in ways that border on the unearthly.

I knew from an early age that I was not among that group. I knew that the best I could do was find a vehicle for expression. Even then, though I felt a compulsion to have my say and make my voice be heard, I wasn’t certain of what I wanted or needed to say.

And that made me ask myself yet another question: Is expression without meaning even expression at all? Without meaning, is it not just pointless sound that fills the void of time and keeps us from recognizing both the true sounds we are meant to hear and the necessary silences?

Of course, I don’t know answers to any of these questions. Do I ever? Hell, I don’t even know why I am writing this this morning, outside of the fact that I truly felt a need to say this at this moment.

I want to believe there is meaning and purpose in this or in my work, but I cannot do with any degree of certainty. It might just be another mass of pinecones being produced as the result a stressful winter, hoping that one will find fertile ground to perpetuate my life and line.

Or this might be just the moan of this pine tree in the winds of time.

Amen.

Here’s a song that I have shared here before. See? Never original and usually repetitive. Just kidding. Here’s  the jazz standard Born to Be Blue, written by Mel Torme in 1946. It’s been performed by scores of singers over the years but it became a signature piece for the late Chet Baker. The version I am sharing below highlights his vocals rather than his horn work and features great piano playing from Bobby Scott. Good stuff to hear on a rainy, dark morning.

Before I push you out the door and lock it behind you, let me point out that even though I am featuring a blue painting, a blue song, and a rather introspective (probably too much so) post, I am not actually blue myself right now.

More gray/green, I think.

Sometimes you just wonder about things, don’t you?

Elbow Room

When the gates swing wide on the other side
Just beyond the sunset sea
There’ll be room to spare as we enter there
Room for you and room for me
For the gates are wide on the other side
Where the flowers ever bloom
On the right hand on the left hand
Fifty miles of elbow room

—50 Miles of Elbow Room, Herbert Buffum

I have always longed for elbow room.

Huge arching domes of clear air above.

Wide open spaces for the eye to search.

Soundless vistas with not a soul to be seen.

The elbow room I long for is not that described in the lyrics of the 1930 gospel song, 50 Miles of Elbow Room, from songwriter Herbert Buffum. His version of elbow room is a placid paradise in the hereafter

Ideally, I don’t have to die to find my sought after elbow room. Of course, finding such a place might entail a little imagination along with a willingness to accept that this elbow room most likely will be located inside oneself.

Maybe that’s what I am trying to uncover with my work.

Elbow room. At least, my own little bits of elbow room.

This painting is titled Elbow Room, of course. It’s a return of sorts to my earlier work of the early and mid 2000’s, painted on heavy watercolor paper in the transparent inks I favor. In a way, painting it felt like it was something inherent. Built in. Natural, like coming home, like a circle being completed.

For me, work done in this earlier style this is sometimes the hardest work to judge. It’s like looking at old family photos. You don’t look at the faces in those old pictures and apprise them for attractiveness or ugliness. You just see them for what you know them to be, for what they mean to you. How the outside world sees them is not important.

And this certainly feels like a family photo for me.

Speaking of elbow room, let’s hear a bit of that song, 50 Miles of Elbow Room. I couldn’t find the original from Vaughan Happy Two. The two most significant versions are a gospel version from the Rev. F.W. McGee in 1933 and a traditional folk version from the Carter Family in 1942. The song I am playing today owes its influence to the Carter Family. It’s performed by a favorite of mine, Gillian Welch.

Still feeling the effects of the covid. Not terrible, not good. Just blah. Dead tired. That being the case, I decided to rerun the post above about a painting that currently lives here in the studio with me. Ironically, it was painted during the opening days of the pandemic back in 2020. I chose it because of the paragraph above where I talk about how judging this work in my early style is often difficult for me. For some reason, this idea that seeing them as family photos, as I often do, sometimes prevents me from seeing them as something other than family. Like family, the affection and attraction I may possess for them doesn’t come from their surface beauty, though they might well possess that. It comes from a deeper common bond, a familial one born in an acceptance and understanding of who and what they are.

That really spoke to me this morning. It somehow got my rusty-feeling gears turning which felt pretty good.

I also ran this post because of another post featuring this painting and Daniel Boone that contained a 1930 poem from Arthur Guiterman called On the Vanity of Earthly Greatness:

The tusks which clashed in mighty brawls
Of mastodons, are billiard balls.

The sword of Charlemagne the Just
Is Ferric Oxide, known as rust.

The grizzly bear, whose potent hug,
Was feared by all, is now a rug.

Great Caesar’s bust is on the shelf,
And I don’t feel so well myself.

As someone not feeling so well myself, this made me chuckle. It kind of cemented the deal for this post and painting.

Now, get out of here. You’re crowding me. I need room to breathe. Give me elbow room, I say!

Darwin’s First Mardi Gras, 1994

‘I’m very brave generally,’ he went on in a low voice: ‘only today I happen to have a headache.’

–Tweedle Dum to Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, Lewis Carroll (1871)

Yeah, me too, Tweedle Dum.

When I wrote about frustration early yesterday morning, I didn’t realize how it was going to play out later in the morning.

I had started experiencing a sharp sinus headache, persistent cough, achiness, and a noticeable increase in my fatigue on Sunday afternoon. Didn’t feel great while writing yesterday’s post but managed to get it done. When I went over to the house for breakfast, I decided to test for covid out of an abundance of caution.

Of course, the result was positive.

Why wouldn’t it be? Life was already serving me up a cancer sundae. Why not top it off with a covid cherry?

I did another test just to be sure. It came back with that same glowing red line.

There were a lot of expletives, some pretty creatively constructed, bouncing around the walls of our house at that point. The rest of the day was filled with frustration. The procedure to map out and mark my radiation treatment that was scheduled to begin this week was cancelled and most likely delayed for at least a few weeks, if not more.

In the long run, that’s not a problem as the cancer’s progress has been pretty much halted by the hormone therapy. The frustration was more about the timing of it all and how the fatigue (and other effects) from this combo of covid and cancer will affect my painting schedule.

Oh, well. Things could be worse.

I always keep that in mind which is easy to do when I go to my appointments at the cancer center. Seeing so many folks who are obviously struggling mightily with their cancers makes me feel truly grateful for my current condition.

It could definitely be worse.

I say that this morning even though my head is splitting right now and I feel like taking a nap on the floor of the studio with the cats.

Oh, well. You want to ride the Merry-Go-Round, you have to pay for your ticket, right?

There is a connection between all the three legs of this post’s stool this morning. The line I chose at the top from Tweedle Dum in Through the Looking-Glass reminded me of a Bob Dylan song that I very much enjoy, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. The song is actually about a pair of twins navigating their way through the chaos that is Mardi Gras in New Orleans.

I wasn’t aware but, looking it up, discovered that today is Shrove Tuesday, the first day of Mardi Gras. The painting at the top seemed like it was destined for this post. It’s an early painting, a sort of experimental piece, that I called I Don’t Feel So Good- Darwin’s First Mardi Gras. I wasn’t sure what it was when I was painting it but it slowly reminded me of someone in a festive costume that is knee crawlin’, slip slidin’, commode hugging drunk, to quote Jimmy Buffett. This piece always makes me smile and it seemed right for how I am feeling this morning and for Dylan’s song below.

I bet Darwin ended up with a headache much like mine. Happy Mardi Gras, Darwin.

You, too.

Now, I have to ask you to leave. I have a cat and a floor waiting for me.