Redtree Times

The Omnipresence- Before and After

I see the spectacle of morning from the hilltop over against my house, from daybreak to sunrise, with emotions which an angel might share. The long slender bars of cloud float like fishes in the sea of crimson light. From the earth, as a shore, I look out into that silent sea. I seem to partake its rapid transformations; the active enchantment reaches my dust, and I dilate and conspire with the morning wind.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature (1836)

The Omnipresence from 2024 was one of those paintings that really rang the bell for me. The sky in it really drew me in as did the winding river. I figured that the reason it never found a home was simply because it was, at 36″ by 24″, a somewhat larger painting. The size and the corresponding higher price made it less viable for some folks.

But when it came back to me in May, I began to really examine it. It still clicked all my boxes. But seeing it in person made me realize how poorly it was portrayed by my photography of it. The painting I was looking at didn’t seem like the same painting depicted in my in my photo of it. There was a red pall that hovered over the whole thing, especially dulling the brightness of the landscape and the river in the lower half of the painting.

But while I was berating myself for letting such a poor and misleading image go out into the world, I also began to notice that the landscape that ran along each side of the river had a dullness that didn’t match the title which was I originally felt pointed out the brilliance and harmony of all things. Omnipresence means everywhere in everything. It was particularly evident in the empty flower beds which seemed to suck away all brightness from the bottom half of the painting.

I had gone back and forth when I was painting this piece as to whether the flower beds should be filled with color. At the time, I felt that the empty beds were enough on their own as a structural component and complement to the sky, that filling the beds would be too much. Too busy.

Looking at it after it came back into my hands, I realized my mistake in that choice. While I still thought it was a powerful piece as it was in its original form, I could see now that it was begging for more color, more brightness in its bottom half. The Red Tree in the original seemed to me to be trying to escape the drab landscape in which it was bound. It was like looking at a dance where the partners were dancing at different tempos and rhythms.

That was all I could see then. I knew I had to work on that bottom. And my photography of it. I set to work creating colorful flower beds and was immediately rewarded. It felt like an incredible transformation to me as each bed was filled and when I finished them all, I knew I had made the right decision this time.

I then worked on the photography. I don’t know how I had so missed the mark in capturing this piece originally. I would like to blame it on the monitor at the time since I am getting much better results with my newer current model and am finding a lot of my work from past years that have similar imaging shortfalls. But that can’t fully explain it. I simply overlooked something at the time.

I was probably drunk.

I am, of course, kidding.

I was stoned.

Again, kidding.

Whatever the hell was wrong with me at the time, it seemed a moot point after the changes to the painting and its new photo image. You can see it for yourself in the comparative image at the top. There is so much more brightness throughout the painting now and the two dancers, the upper and lower halves of the painting, seem in joyous harmony. And what I am seeing in person comes across much more, as it should, in the photo now.

Like most artists, I don’t like admitting mistakes made with my work. But as it also is with most artists, some pieces reveal themselves in need of something or other after they have left the studio. Many famous artists are notorious for making changes to pieces long after they have left the studio, some going so far as taking work off the walls of collectors to add a touch here and there.

I didn’t have to take it off anyone’s wall but this was definitely the case here. And while I am embarrassed by not seeing my poor choice made in the original, I am thrilled to see it as it is now.

It feels like it now fully lives up to its title.

All I could ask.

Here’s a song that may or may not have anything to do with subject. It’s a longtime favorite from John Lennon, Instant Karma. I think the connection here is that there is good karma in recognizing and rectifying our mistakes.

Now, get out of here before I say something rude and blow all that good karma…

PS- The Omnipresence is available now through the West End Gallery.

Give Me One Reason– At Principle Gallery

We give advice by the bucket but take it by the grain.

–-William R. Alger, A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations (1875)

You should really…

Have you ever thought of trying…

Why don’t you…

There are probably a lot more beginnings to sentences than these three examples that are heard on a regular basis by any person toiling in the creative fields.

People telling you that you should try adding something to your work.

Or take something out.

Or do more or less of something.

Or your work should be more like that of someone else. That’s an all-time favorite.

Or try painting some place they know. That was the first unsolicited advice I received about my work, given to me the first time my work was ever shown publicly.

I remember the unpleasant feeling of my sphincter tightening then and that is still the reaction when I am given similar advice, even when it is given in a friendly and seemingly well-meaning way.

Yeah, I know the sphincter tightening thing is probably a little too graphic but, hey, I’m the one writing this, am I not? You get what you get when you read this, much as you do when you view my work.

It is the way it is because that is who I am.

If you don’t like it, then you have the option of not reading or looking at it. Or you could write your own blog on your chosen subject in a way that better suits you, much as you could get out your own damn brushes and paint your own painting that is more like the one you want to see.

Sorry if that sounds harsher than it’s meant to be.

I did actually reply once to such a suggestion that the person should try painting whatever they wanted me to attempt for themselves. That way they would get the painting that they wanted to see.

That sounds rude but it was said in a polite way that let the person know that I had no intention of taking their advice because the painting they wanted to see was not one that I wanted or needed to see. I immediately knew that it didn’t spark the kind of interest and enthusiasm required. Nobody wants to read the words of someone writing about something of which they have no interest, nor do they want to see a painting of something that holds no interest for the artist. You read or write because of the enthusiasm and emotional investment of the writer or artist.

I have been given many dozens of such well-meaning suggestions over the years. I could put together a large show of all those paintings I will never paint. It doesn’t happen as often now as it did earlier in my career. I think that is because I have been around so long that people now just figure that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. And on those rare occasions when the advice comes, I paste on a smile and say things like that’s interesting, I have to look into that, or maybe I will try that.

I mostly hear these suggestions now from my wife. I used to give the same responses as those above but we’ve been together forever so she knows by now what those terms mean– that I will not be doing whatever she suggested. Now, I just say I don’t think so, it’s not what I do.

More paintings added to my exhibit of non-existent work.

I hope this doesn’t come across as too crotchety. It’s not meant to be.

Well, maybe a little. But it could be worse. One of my favorite stories on an artist receiving unsolicited advice is one I have shared here a few times over the years. Below is as it appeared on the Fenimore Art Museum‘s blog many years ago and concerned the late, great American Folk artist Ralph Fasanella, whose work I have shared here many times.

Ralph Fasanella had trouble painting hands. A lot of trained artists do too, so it is not surprising that a union organizer who turned to drawing suddenly at the age of 40 would struggle with hands early in his career. But he did have something that proved better than years of formal training: he believed that he was an artist and that what he was doing – painting the lives of working people – was a calling that deserved his complete attention and all-consuming passion.

And that made him react when anyone suggested that his paintings weren’t up to snuff. He said that he was painting “felt space,” not real space. His people and the urban settings he placed them in were not realistic in the purest sense of the word, but they sang with spirit and emotion. As Ralph said, “I may paint flat, but I don’t think flat.”

His most memorable quote, and the one that says the most about him, occurred very early in his artistic career, when someone told him that his hands looked like sticks. He ought to study Rembrandt’s hands, they said, in order to get it right.  

His response is priceless: “Fuck you and Rembrandt!  My name is Ralph!”

I probably won’t adopt Ralph’s approach but you can bet his words will be echoing in my head the next time someone says “You should paint like…”

I think the point here is that when you read or view or listen to the works of others, take them for what they are. Even the most well-meaning suggestion carries the implication that their work is somehow lacking.

There’s a lot more that can be said about this subject and I have probably not done a great job thus far. But I have taken up too much of your time already, for you good folks who have read this far.

Maybe I will get to it sometime soon. Or maybe not. Who knows?

Here’s a song that might well be the anthem for most artists, me definitely included. It’s I Don’t Like Being Told What to Do from country singer/songwriter Roger Alan Wade. I had never heard of him or this song before just a few minutes ago. Apparently, his songs, especially the song If You’re Gonna Be Dumb You Gotta Be Tough, appears on most episodes of the TV show Jackass as well all of their movies. Not having seen more a minute or two of the show, I don’t know if that is a ringing endorsement. But I like and understand the idea of this song. That is the only endorsement I can offer.

Now, git before I get really rude.

Solitude and Reverence– At Principle Gallery

You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.

~ Wendell Berry, A Continuous Harmony: Essays Cultural and Agricultural (1972)

According to Google AI (whose info I trust as much I would a monkey with a hatchet) citing the National Geographic Society as a primary source, historians and anthropologists typically identify a civilization by several core features:

• Urbanization: Densely populated settlements and cities acting as centers of trade and religion.
• Social Hierarchy: The division of labor, distinct social classes, and a ruling elite.
• Complex Institutions: Organized governments and formal religious systems.
• System of Record Keeping: Written languages or standardized numerical and symbolic systems (such as the Incan quipu).
• Advanced Technology: Infrastructure, monumental architecture, and innovations that extend control over the environment.

Now bear in mind that I am just mulling this over this morning and probably can’t and won’t offer a full-throated defense of whatever the hell I might say here on dull-witted Monday morning. It just seems to me, after a quick read of the definition of civilization they offer, that the same core features, as they describe them, could be applied to a prison.

Is that the ultimate definition of civilization–a highly controlled environment where the individual is reduced to a number and an assigned cell and job?

I don’t know but it sure sounds like it could be hidden somewhere there in the details of how civilization is presented to us.

The quote at the top from the great essayist/poet Wendell Berry was written in 1968 as a journal entry during a return drive to his Kentucky home after an extended stay in California. Here is that whole short journal entry:

The relief of mountains and deserts after the over-populated, overmechanized regions. The oppression of driving mile after mile under a veil of poison. Now it is only in the wild places that man can sense the rarity of being a man. In the crowded places he is more and more closed in by the feeling that he is ordinary–and that he is, on the average, expendable.

You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.

That little bit says so much about how civilization, in many ways, moves us away from our humanity and the individuality that comes with it.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy many of the perks of civilization. I am writing this on a computer and sending it out on the interweb tubes– that’s what it’s called, right? I sometimes enjoy the anonymity that comes in a crowded city.

But it doesn’t take long for that feeling of being a blank, nameless face to realize that it is also the same feeling, as Berry put it, of being ordinary and expendable. It is counter to what I believe as the individuality that defines our humanity. To me, civilization, using the definition above, seems more intent on controlling than expanding humanity and its spirit.

I have tried, without knowing, to adhere to Berry’s admonition that we best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it. I think it is the responsibility of artists of all sorts– through our writings, our music, our dance, our poetry, and so on– to remind others that while we are part of civilization, we are first and foremost humans.

Individuals with feelings, emotions, and dreams for which civilization often gives little comfort or aid as that offered by art.

Art frees us from civilization. And prisons of all kinds.

I really wasn’t planning on an anti-civilization post this morning. Actually, had no idea what I would write when I sat down. But I had that line at the top in my files for some time and, though it nagged at me a little, wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Now I know, for better or worse.

Take it for what it’s worth from an unshaven, unbathed, groggy, half-witted older guy sitting in the woods on a Monday morning in June. If you feel like arguing the points made, do it with yourself.

I am civilization today and I ain’t listening.

Here’s a song that might well sum up the rest of the day.

Chasing the Elusive— Now at West End Gallery

Don’t swallow bleach
Out on Sandymount beach,
I’m not sure I’d reach you in time my boy.
Please don’t bungee jump
Or ignore a strange lump
And a gasoline pump’s not a toy.

— Lisa Hannigan, Safe Travels, (Don’t Die)

Wasn’t sure what I wanted to write this morning. Actually, I seldom know what I am going to write when I head across to the studio in the early morning dark. But since it was Sunday, I felt compelled to at least share a song, as I normally do. While browsing some tunes, most of which I already knew and had probably shared here in the past, I came across one that I hadn’t heard before. It was from a favorite of mine, Irish singer/songwriter Lisa Hannigan, and had an intriguing title, Safe Travels, (Don’t Die).

I began listening to it as I read along with the lyrics. I liked the song’s sound immediately and the lyrics about the things to avoid in one’s travels made me chuckle. But one line sealed the deal for me: And a gasoline pump’s not a toy.

It immediately took me back to my trip home two weeks ago after my Principle Gallery show in Alexandria. I was traveling with my neighbor and good friend, Bob, who had taken it upon himself to make sure I made it there and back safely. He had seen firsthand how fatigued I was in the weeks before the show and how my mind and judgement were not operating at full speed, possibly making me a danger to myself or anyone else on the road.

The day after the opening we headed home, up route 15 along the Susquehanna River. Stopping for fuel, Bob trusted me to gas up the van at a Sheetz convenience store and went in to use the restroom. I was absolutely beat at that time when I began pumping the gas. After a bit, the gas pump handle clicked, letting me know that it was full. I tried to squeeze in a bit more and as I did so, I zoned out. I found myself staring out into the distance. It was kind of nice until the smell of gas broke my peaceful interlude in another dimension. I looked down and realized my left foot was resting in a huge puddle of gas, well over a half inch deep. There was probably about a half-gallon of gas on the ground.

I quickly finished up and headed into the Sheetz to let them know they needed to do whatever they did for spills and to try to wash the gas off my shoes. As I stood at the sink in the Men’s Room frantically washing and rinsing the bottom and side of my shoe, a couple of guys in trucker caps stood looking quizzically at me from the urinals. I didn’t even try to explain.

I thought I had done a pretty decent job, and we headed up the road. But it didn’t take long to realize that the smell of gas from my shoes was filling the cab. Bob said he couldn’t take this for another three hours, that we would have to stop somewhere and try to clean them better. We were along the river at that point and there aren’t a lot of rest stops or even great places to pull off so it took a while. We finally came across a small rest stop tucked in a small space between the busy road the Susquehanna. It had a great view of some rapids and there were a number of local Amish folks there, some fishing, some eating at the picnic tables, and some doing whatever it is that Amish or any other folks, for that matter, do at a Rest Area.

Bob, for some unknown reason, fortuitously had both Method cleanser and lacquer thinner in his van. He told me to hand him my shoe and set to cleaning it as I zoned out once more watching the river water tumble by. I noticed some of the Amish giving Bob the same quizzical look that I received in the Sheetz men’s room and I began to see the absurdity of my very large friend cleaning my shoe as I sat there shoeless, staring at the river. I wondered what those folks were thinking then began to laugh.

The cleaning did work and we safely made our way home, odor free.

Okay, it’s not a great story. But nobody got hurt or died and, for today’s song with that line a gasoline pump’s not a toy, that’s enough for me.

Now get out of here and, for Pete’s sake, travel safe and don’t die.

In Rhapsody– Available through West End Gallery

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

— Anselm Kiefer

I don’t usually like to share quotes from other artists without also highlighting their work. However, since I have shared this quote from artist Anselm Kiefer as well as other posts featuring his work, I thought I would just focus on this quote and its meaning for me. It might best describe how I feel about what I do.

I do view my work in many ways as the palace of my memory, a visual storehouse of my recollections of life’s sensations. It is a place where I can compile and tell the stories of my memory, sometimes embellishing and maybe even aggrandizing them. A palace need not be plain and dull as our reality sometimes is.

And much as Kiefer wrote, my memory in the form of my work is my only homeland. It is the only place where I feel totally at home. It is a land that is responsive to my needs as well as being loyal and true to me. And me to it.

I think it was this sense of being and acceptance that I found in my work that first attracted me to art. It wasn’t a desire to make pretty things or emulate others because I possessed that talent. I didn’t. There is another quote from Kiefer that I have shared before that sums up pretty well my own attraction to painting:

As an artist you have to find something that deeply interests you. It’s not enough to make art that is about art, to look at Matisse and Picasso and say, how can I paint like them? You have to be obsessed by something that can’t come out in any other way, then the other things – the skill and technique – will follow.

I desperately needed an outlet to release the landscape of my memories, to create a place where I could erect my own palace. Painting provided that in ways I couldn’t find in other ways of expression. And, as Kiefer says, the skill and technique followed. Well, I like to think that it did.

I don’t know why I am writing this this morning. I think some of it has to do with the amount of time I have spent in looking at older work while prepping for my current solo show at the Principle Gallery and my October show at the West End Gallery. Revisiting that older work is like looking at images of my palace being constructed. You might say the first building blocks being put in place. At the time, I didn’t know that but now that the structure is pretty much in place, I can see their importance in the construction that came after them. Each was a vital building block.

Without them, the palace would not have come to fruition. And though it might appear humble when compared to the palaces of others, I find that don’t really care. It is my palace and like the work it reflects, it is not meant to be like any other palace.

And that is that.

I struggled to find a song but settled on this one, Will You Miss Me When I Burn, from singer/songwriter Will Oldham who has recorded this under the psudonym Bonnie “Prince” Billy as well as Palace and Palace Brothers. I went for the Palace connection. Oldham wrote and recorded one of my favorite songs, I See a Darkness, that Johnny Cash covered in his last true incarnation as the artist he was. The darkness of that song is also present in this one selected for today, but it seems to match up with the painting.

That is to say that it fits well my palace.

Now be gone with you or the Palace Guard shall be summoned…

Archaeology: The Silence of the World— Now at Principle Gallery

My sight with the clouds’
Unimpeded rest in changing moves
Across the sky: the aged in endless
Unbecoming are at peace.

—Kathleen Raine, Ah, many, many, are the dead… (1978)

I wrote here a couple of weeks back about another Archaeology painting and how are lives will be told in the very distant future by little bits and pieces left behind that, while they may give a general outline of who we were, will not bear any totality. They will never be able to fully reveal our joys, pains, desires and regrets to those future investigators. They won’t be able to detect the ways our eyes gleamed in our happiness or how they sunk in despair. They will not be able to measure how our faces were transformed by a smile. They won’t be able to see our quietness, our sadness, or our boisterousness.

In these things from us left behind they will not observe how we felt looking up at sapphire blue sky on a September morning. Or in watching the rustle of the green leaves of a tree as a summer storm approaches.

These items will tell our stories but the real story of who we are can only be told through these ephemeral elements that are beyond measurement.

About the time I was writing about that earlier Archaeology post, I came across a poem from the late British poet Kathleen Raine (1908-2003) that really drove that point home for me. It was first in the stanza shown at the top, especially the line:  the aged in endless Unbecoming are at peace. 

That line resonated with me, especially the idea that we are in a constant state of unbecoming that becomes more pronounced as we age and shed so many ideas of our past and present selves. I had just read a 1929 poem, Shadows, from D.H. Lawrence written in the last months of his life while suffering from tuberculosis. The final lines of his poem very much echo this idea of unbecoming:

I am in the hands of the unknown God,
he is breaking me down to his own oblivion
to send me forth on a new morning, a new man

This idea that we are being broken down into an oblivion made sense to me in a way that it would not have when I was much younger. It made the thought that we might someday be defined by things that might seem insignificant to us now seemed to make sense as well. These were mere things that might have once held meaning for us but were shed and left behind in the process of our unbecoming.

That might seem a daunting, even sad, thing to many of us. But it is merely the way of all things. It is a transition from one state of being to another, from the unbecoming of one state to the becoming of another. Nothing to fear, nothing to be done but watch and appreciate the clouds in the sky.

Raine’s poem is shown in full below as well as a reading of it by British philosopher/psychiatrist Dr. Iain McGilchrist. I particularly how she describes, in her unbecoming, how a cloud presently crossing the sky or green buds being gently stirred by the wind take on more meaning than the joys and pains she has known in the past.

Her poem has a feeling that that I see in the painting at the top, Archaeology: The Silence of the World. This is emphasized by the many chairs in the artifact field. I often cite my Red Chair as being mostly being symbolic of the loss of another or the fading of memory. Both seem to fit here. I also think Raine’s poem and this painting have a similar ethereal quality.

I am also throwing in a song. Yeah, it’s also in the same theme– sort of– but Leonard Cohen‘s humor in the intro to a short version of his Tower of Song make it worth a listen.

There’s lot here to read, listen to, and think about. Probably too much for a Friday morning. Well, like many things, that’s the way it is.

If you don’t feel like reading it, listening to it, or thinking about it, then maybe you should leave now. You know– git.

Ah, many, many, are the dead…

I have a room all to myself; it is nature. It is a place beyond the jurisdiction of human governments. There is a prairie beyond your laws. Nature is a prairie for outlaws.

–Henry David Thoreau, Journal January 3, 1853

[From 2015]

At last weekend’s Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery I was asked if there was work that I do for myself alone and I replied that there is, that I sometimes do small pieces in moments of frustration or anger that I won’t share with the outside world. I feel that even a person living the most transparent of lives should not share every waking thought.

And I probably share more than I should as it is.

This question led to a short description of the work from my earlier Exiles and Outlaws series, both of which I have written here a number of times in the past. The Outlaws series probably was closer as an answer to the question posed to me that day, consisting of images that examined the darker aspects that make up the prism of our personality. The central characters in these pieces were often armed with handguns and were definitely haunted by their past actions, existing in a state of fear.

At least, that is how I saw them. Some others saw them as predatory stalkers who might be lurking outside their own windows. It was an interpretation that I wasn’t initially expecting when I painted this work. But it might make sense, given the fear and sometimes paranoia that infects many people, one that probably feeds our obsession with guns.

The piece above, Outlaw’s Vigil, is from that 2006 series and hangs in my studio now. It is a prime example of the differing perceptions of the work. Many have seen him as a potential danger, a symbol of imminent evil, while I see him as a person filled with absolute fear, always looking over his shoulder to see what is coming upon him from behind, from his past. He is forever frozen in this instance of terror.

There is no looking ahead, no future.

Just the present being crowded out by the past.

Odd as it might seem, this small painting is inspirational to me. It serves as an object lesson, an example of how I do not want to exist in this world. I do not want to live in fear of the past or so fearful of others that I cling to a gun in my own home, peeking out my windows.

This piece lets me know that I want to live a fearless life. That’s most likely a fool’s mission but this odd little painting reminds me to not give in to my fears like that haunted figure peeking out their window.

The Confession (2006)

Back to the present. I’ve been looking at a lot of older work in recent days, and this piece held my gaze for some time. The work like this from the 2006 Outlaws series generally does that for me. I remember when I introduced these figures at my opening at the Principle Gallery in 2006 that a number of people were alarmed by them, fearing that this was the direction in which my work was heading, that the Red Tree landscapes had been run out of town by these gun-toting miscreants.

There was a lot of explaining about how this work was just another facet in my own personal prism, something we all possess. And usually suppress and hide. In my case, that facet most often shows itself in the black underpainting on which much of my work begins, giving even the most colorful landscapes a dark undertone that sometimes goes unnoticed at first.

I feel that dark undertone is just part of our nature. And as Thoreau wrote at the top: Nature is a prairie for outlaws.

Okay, maybe that’s stretch. Actually, this whole thing is a pretense for me simply wanting to share a song, Ten Cent Pistol, from the Black Keys. I can be deep in my work, oblivious to seemingly everything, but when this song comes on my attention immediately goes to it. Felt like it fit with my Outlaws work.

Maybe not.

I’m an outlaw this morning so who cares?

Ecclesiastes (1995)

To everything (Turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (Turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

— Turn! Turn! Turn!  Pete Seeger (1959)

The painting above was painted in 1995 and for probably the last 27 or 28 years been in a closet, in an unseen stack of old work, most of which deserved to be in there. I pulled it out recently and took it out of the cheap frame that held it so I could better examine it. There was so much I liked about it that I wondered why I had kept it under wraps for so long.

It has an earthiness in its colors, an organic quality in the roll of its lines and forms, and an overglaze of cobalt blue that left a wonderful sedimentation in the sky that excites me now in the same way I am sure it did 31 years ago. It also had a title that tells me that I held it in high esteem at the time: Ecclesiastes.

I have mentioned a number of times that I was not raised with any religion but some of the stories and literature of the Bible came to me in other forms. I learned a lot from my reading, from grade school presentations where a local church lady would tell biblical stories with a felt board, and, surprisingly, from watching Jeopardy with Art Fleming in the 60’s and from my reading.

And also, from listening to music.

It would most likely have taken me many years to discover the book of Ecclesiastes if not for the adaptation of its words into a folk song, Turn! Turn! Turn!, written by Pete Seeger in 1959. And I only learned of that from The Byrds’ cover of it in 1965. Their single was never far from the turntable of our stereo console in the 60’s and those opening chords still give me a satisfying chill.

My use of that painting’s title stemmed from that song and meant that I saw something important for me in it back in 1995. Why I had chosen to ignore it, even hiding it away, for so long remains a mystery. And I guess it doesn’t matter. I have had it out with me in my painting area for a couple of weeks now and it gets many look every day. I am really intrigued and pleased by it, maybe even more that I was when it was first painted. That probably comes from me seeing in it the importance it then held for me as a leading edge of what I was doing then.  Even though its mine, I don’t know that I could paint this today. It would be different and most likely not better in any way.

You can never fully recreate those things which truly capture a moment in your development, in art and in life.

For now, I am enjoying this painting’s presence and the reminder that comes from its title, that to everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.

Here are The Byrds and Turn! Turn! Turn!.

I was going to tell you to Git! but I think I would like you to stay and give a good listen.

I am enjoying your company this morning,

Into the Blue Tangle- Now at Principle Gallery

We are one of only three species on our planet that can claim to be self-aware, yet self-delusion may be a more significant characteristic of our kind.

–Michael Crichton, Prey (2002)

I often find myself worrying about self-delusion.

Some of it comes from our delusions about our abilities and powers as humans to master and control nature or the new technologies we have unleashed on the world. Michael Crichton examined that theme in two of his books. Jurassic Park examined the hubris that we displayed in thinking we could control nature’s creation and Prey looked at our inability to see the consequences of the power of new technologies such as nanotechnology and artificial intelligence.

Call me skeptical but whenever I hear someone make boastful claims about our abilities to control anything, especially on a grand scale, I get a little tense.

So, while I may worry about our claims to have mastery over weather, AI, dinosaurs, outer space, or war, the self -delusion I find myself worrying most about is in my own judgement in my own little world. Primarily, how I see my own work.

I sometimes worry that my own self-delusion about some of my work blinds me to obvious flaws or deficiencies within it. Work that I think is among my best often receives less attention than I think it deserves.

I then find myself asking all sorts of questions.

Is the work itself not as good as I believe it to be?

Am I seeing or sensing something in it that doesn’t come across to the viewer?

Is it a matter of timing– the wrong work in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Is it too wide a departure from my regular body of work?

It goes on and on.

I very much felt this way about much of the work I produced last year for my two solo shows. Much of this work consisted of tangles making up the sky, such as those seen in the painting shown at the top, Into the Blue Tangle. I felt at the time that this work was important for me, that it would have a lasting impact. It felt strong in its emotional impact for me. It had a simplicity in its profile that spoke easily to me. I found myself being drawn into the tangles and curves of the skies, following them in a mesmerized way. It was work that I thought would speak well beyond the here and now. Work that would have legs.

I felt that many of these pieces were among my best works. But it was not as well-received as I anticipated. I began to question my perception of the work.

Was I delusional in how I saw these paintings?

I still don’t know.

I have had two of these paintings on the fireplace in front of my desk for most of this year and spend a lot of time examining them. I look constantly for deficiencies in them or ways in which they could be improved. But I always find them just as they should be and they still elicit the same strong response from me. If anything, this constant examination has strengthened my belief that their time is still to come, that they will speak much louder in some future without me.

At the opening of my current show, Into the Blue Tangle was hung to fill in for a sold piece. In my time at the gallery, my eyes kept going to it, wanting to be drawn into the tangled cords that made up its sky. It was as mesmerizing as I remembered and felt important to me still as though the past year had somehow validated my belief in it.

Is this self-delusion?

I don’t know.

And the more I think about it, the less I care if that is how it’s seen. Much art, my own included, is an act of self-delusion, a distorted reflection of the human condition.

That begs the question: Can an artist function effectively without at least a bit of self-delusion?

I don’t know. Maybe self-delusion is that valuable tool in our toolboxes that we don’t like to admit having. It is, after all, as Crichton wrote, a significant characteristic of our species.

Okay, let’s clear out this place with a song. As I wrote, I glimpsed up at a carved wooden figure of Don Quixote on the stone shelf built into my fireplace. My sister gave it to me about 55 or so years ago and it seems to hang over me. Maybe his self-delusion inspired my own. Here’s a song from Welsh musician Gruff Rhys called The Last Conquistador that seems custom made for Don Quixote and me.

Night’s Dream– At Principle Gallery

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

-Elie Wiesel, interview with U.S. News & World Report, October, 1986

I’ve been sitting here for quite some time now, staring at the quote above from Elie Wiesel. I had planned on writing about how my work evolved as a response to the indifference of others but now, looking at those words and putting them into the context of  Wiesel’s experience, I feel a bit foolish. Wiesel, who had survived nightmares of the Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust to later spend his life crusading so that it might never happen again, was eyewitness to indifference on a grand scale, from those who were complicit or those who did not raise their voices in protest even though they knew what was happening to the personal indifference shown by his Nazi guards, as they turned a blind eye to the suffering and inhumanity directly before them on a daily basis, treating their innocent captives as though they were nothing at all. Less than human.

The indifference of which he speaks is that which looks past you without any regard for your humanity. Or your mere existence, for that matter. It is this failure to engage, this failure to allow our empathy to take hold and guide us, that grants permission for the great suffering that takes place throughout our world.

You can see where writing about showing a picture as a symbolic battle against indifference might seem more than a bit trivial. It certainly does to me.

But I do see in it a microcosm of the wider implications. We all want our humanity, our existence, recognized and for me this was a small way of raising my voice to be heard, of having my very existence recognized.

When I first started showing my work I was not far removed from a period that was the lowest point of my life. I felt absolutely voiceless and barely visible in the world, dispossessed in many ways. In art I found a way to finally express an inner voice, my real humanity, that others could see and react to. So, when my first opportunity to display my work came, at the West End Gallery in 1995, I went to the show with great trepidation.

For some, it was just a show of some nice paintings by some nice folks. For me, it was an actual test of my existence.

It was interesting as I stood off to the side, watching as people walked about the space. It was elating when someone stopped and looked at my small paintings. But that feeling of momentary glee was overwhelmed by the indifference shown by those who walked by with hardly a glance. That crushed me. I would have rather they had stopped and spit at my work on the wall than merely walk by dismissively. That, at least, would have made me feel heard.

Don’t get me wrong here– some people walking by a painting that doesn’t move them with barely a glance are not Nazis in any sense of the word. I held no ill will toward them, even at that moment. I knew that I was the one who had placed so much significance on this moment, not them. They had no idea that they were playing part to an existential crisis.

The funny thing is that now, I am even a bit grateful for their indifference that night because it made me vow that I would paint bolder, that I would make my voice be heard. Without that indifference I might have settled and not continued forward on the path I had chosen to follow.

But in this case, I knew that it was up to me to overcome their indifference.

Again, please excuse my use of Mr. Wiesel’s quote here. My little anecdote has little to do with the experience of those who suffered horribly at the hands of evil people who were enabled by the indifference of those who might have stopped them. I apologize for invoking his words in my poor analogy.

The point is that we all want to be heard, to be recognized on the most basic level for our own existence, our own individual selves. But too often, we all show indifference that takes that away from others, including those that we love. We all need to listen and hear, to look and see, to express our empathy with those we encounter.

We need to care.

Maybe in that small ways the greater effects of indifference of which Elie Wiesel spoke can be somehow avoided.

We can hope.

This post first ran here quite a few years ago and has been replayed several times. I had been thinking about it and the Wiesel quote recently and how indifference has played such a large role in the current state of the world so when I ran late again this morning, I decided to replay it. Plus, it remains a favorite of mine. I have told the story many times of the first exhibit in which my work was shown but have often edited out the part where this show represented an existential crossroad in my mind. It felt at the time that if there had been nothing but indifference that first night, I would have been back in the wilderness. Pathless and lost.

But thankfully, there were inquisitive eyes and kind words that kept me on my path. Because of the grace contained in those eyes and words, the indifference I experienced that night did not overwhelm or defeat me. It only made me even more determined to make my voice heard.

I still think my experience is a poor example of Wiesel’s words but if it makes a single person question the times that they have easily chosen indifference in their lives when a kind word or a helping hand may have changed someone’s day or life, then I am okay with my use of it.

Also, I have to point out that the sentiment behind the Wiesel quote is not new. I would like to go into it now but don’t have the time. You can read about it at Quote Investigator.

Here’s a song that gets to the point here. This is the great Etta James with her version of I Wish Someone Would Care. I love the original. written and performed by the Soul Queen of New Orleans, Irma Thomas, but Etta James puts some extra hurt in her cover.

I hear you and I see you. Now you have to leave. Git.