Redtree Times

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.  In short, I allow faults to appear, the better to fix my sensations.

–Claude Monet, 1912

Much of what is below was first posted here back in 2012, I’ve shared it several time over the intervening years, always slightly changing its wording. This particular rerun has a lot more rewriting and added content. Probably didn’t need it but sometimes I like to put lipstick on my pig. Here it goes:

I have had this little sign hanging in my studio for the last 16 years [nearly 30 years now], a rough reminder to myself when I begin to feel like my work is bending too much to the so-called rules of art or the judgments and advice of others. It reminds me that when I am working in my own little world it is my realm. Mine alone. I control the parameters of what is possible, of what defines reality in my work.

The rules of others mean nothing in my little painted world.

Over the years I have glimpsed this small sign at times when I have been feeling that my work is stagnating or beginning to adhere to accepted conventions. Maybe I have even unwittingly created my own rules that after a time have become restrictive. At those times I have been spurred to push my work in some new direction. It might come in the form of heightening the intensity of color, introducing new hues that seems improbable or incompatible with nature, or adding new elements or perspectives.

Or all of these things and a little more.

It’s as though these two small words are sharp prods that constantly remind me that nobody can control me when I am here in my created world. There’s a great liberation in this realization and I find myself trusting my own judgment of my work more and more. Because I have created my own criteria for its reality, criticism from others means little now.

I think that’s what I am trying to get at here, that an artist must possess an absolute belief that they are the sole voice of authority in their work, that they, not others, determine its validity. Maybe that’s why I am so drawn to the Outsider artists, those untrained artists who often work in whatever materials are available to them– house paint, found items, and sometimes even mud. These artists maintain total belief in their personal vision and create a personal inner world of art in which it can live and prosper.

Rules mean nothing to them; only the expression of that world of their inner self matters.

When I reshared this post back in 2016, my friend Linda Leinen, a wonderful writer and photographer, down in Texas commented:

I’ve either never read that quotation or never felt its truth so keenly. I often hear photographers talking about the rules for their art, especially the rules for composition: anguishing because they’d forgotten to “obey” them. In one or two cases, I’ve seen their level of satisfaction with playing by the rules increase, even as the vitality is drained from their work.

My response was:

I’ve been thinking about this subject this morning and I think that in art “rules” tend to be templates that can be followed to create a successful piece of work. They are templates that we know and accept. But these “rules” are only the ones that we know. There may be other ways outside of the known and they can only be found by straying from the accepted way of doing things.

I think your point about finding satisfaction by playing by the rules even while vitality is drained away makes a lot of sense. By following the rules there is a greater chance of creating an acceptable work but it doesn’t guarantee that the work will excite and inspire. The excitement that comes from the discovery of the new, something that strays from the known, far outstrips the satisfaction of following the rules.

In short, rules are like road maps. They may show you a way to get where you want your work to go. It almost the easiest and most well-trod path.

The highway.

My point is that there is almost always an alternate route. Getting off those crowded main roads often brings new discoveries, excitement, and a freshness that is lost on those bland highways. I believe that is the vitality to which Linda referred.

This ties neatly — don’t know how that happened–into a post from several days ago about the Five Habits of the Mind. It suggests five questions that anyone making a creative decision in any field or situation should ask themself.  IS THERE ANOTHER WAY? was one of those five questions.

My answer is that there is almost always another way. Sometimes it’s just a matter if you have the guts to take those winding side roads that don’t even show up on the road maps. It might take a lot longer to get where you hoped to go. Hell, you might not even get there. But if you do finally get there, you will soon realize that the trip was worth the effort and the risk.

My advice? Break some rules. Toss the roadmap aside and take the next off ramp. You never know what you mind find out there.

Here’s a song. Yes, a song. It was the first that came to mind even though I haven’t heard it in a very long time. Seems to fit though I imagine if wanted to think a little harder there might be some that fit even better. But, hey, you get what you get when you chose this back road. This is Sheryl Crow and a 2017 performance of her 1996 hit, Everyday Is a Winding Road.

You had your song. Now hit the road. Git…

Pondering Solitude— Now at the Gmeiner

Life is painful. It has thorns, like the stem of a rose. Culture and art are the roses that bloom on the stem. The flower is yourself, your humanity. Art is the liberation of the humanity inside yourself.

― Daisaku Ikeda (1928-2023), Discussions on Youth (1999)

The other day I wrote about how art creates the artist, how the artist’s being is ultimately shaped by the art they make. How they become a reflection of their art rather than their art merely reflecting them. That very day, I came across an article on the online magazine Aeon titled How Art Invented Humanity. It basically took the same hypothesis as the one expressed in my post and expanded it throughout our history.

It went back to the Neolithic cave paintings of around 20,000 years, such as those in Lascaux, describing how these paintings first expressed the world around us, the animals and elements of nature those early humans observed. The first figurative expression of humans did not appear until 8 to 10 thousand years later. It was as though for those earlier thousands of years we were still developing a consciousness of self and the unique singularity in their world. As though during that interim we obtained a questioning sense, one that found us seeking meaning even as we struggled to survive the harshness of the world then. Though beyond mere animal instinct.

Had their art brought them to this point in our evolution?

I don’t know. It’s an interesting article and thesis. I am not going to go further into it though. That sounds a bit like a tease, doesn’t it? Yeah, probably its. I just wanted to mention it, finding the synchronicity between the blogpost and the article interesting.

To be honest, I didn’t want to write anything. Tired, as always. I keep hoping the fatigue from my hormone therapy will ease up but it keeps hanging on, especially in recent weeks as I battled lingering cold. There is good news, however. I had a great week of work in the studio, the best in quite some time. It’s been wonderful to be immersed in paint again, to have my mind run freely in those familiar tracks of pattern and flow. To block out the bullshit of disease and the chaotic world outside my studio.

I feel then a bit like that flower that the late Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda describes above; as though I have been liberated by art from the thorns of this world.

And that’s a good thing–I think. It works for me, at least.

Also wanted to remind you that this is the last week of the Big Gems exhibit that the Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center in Wellsboro, PA is hosting in collaboration with the West End Gallery. The exhibit, along with my showcase, A Seedling Returns, ends Sunday, August 9.

Here’s tune from the Beatles and their White Album. This is I’m So Tired.

No comment. Just git, okay?

To seek visions, to dream dreams, is essential, and it is also essential to try new ways of living, to make room for serious experimentation, to respect the effort even where it fails.

–Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976)

In some of my very earliest attempts at painting I used photo references, something I never use now. The photo that these two early pieces are based on was taken soon after I began painting in early 1994. It is of an abandoned place just a short distance up the road from us and is so overgrown now that you can barely see the structures from the road.

I don’t know why this scene intrigued me at the time. Maybe it was the geometry of the buildings and the tree. Maybe it was its state of decay. I don’t know. I just wanted something to paint, something to work on forms and colors and at that point I wasn’t yet sure of working completely from my own inner landscape. For some ridiculous reason, I think I still thought I had to work solely from life.

The bottom image was painted first and reflects the late winter of that year. The snow is gone and the maple tree next to the house is bare with the grasses around it shades of brown, not yet greened. It is painted in a more traditional watercolor style. Not very well painted actually. But I can see that I was beginning to make more complex colors. Still a long way to go but it did what I needed it to do at the time.

The top image was painted from the same photo but a few months later. I like this piece more than the earlier version. While it is still not a great piece of work, it shows considerable movement toward my individualized style. It is much more pleasing to my current eyes and those are the ones I trust. My eyes in ten years might beg to differ. But as it is now, I wouldn’t be ashamed to hang this one in my studio, even if it serves as reminder of what was in light of the what is.

There is a lot more expression in this piece, more freedom. I took artistic liberty in putting in the tree’s foliage and used a black crayon to outline it and the hill behind the house. I think I was using a spray bottle at the time to create the splatters on the grasses in the foreground.

Makes me chuckle a bit. I was experimenting with a lot of different techniques at the time like my spray bottle, scraping, masking with both fluid masks and tape, and some I am sure I have completely forgotten. I am not discounting those techniques but after a while, I just came to the conclusion that they weren’t for me, that in some ways they detracted from what I was attempting to do.

But again, they did what I needed them to do at the time. These experiments were vital steps forward. They showed me what worked and what did not. They gave me glimpses of the next step in my growth, providing just enough inspiration to move forward. My progress was fast but that was because I worked at it obsessively, moving from one needed step to the next.

There are still lessons to be learned. They come further apart now. I work slower and with an excitement that is more subtle. Even so, something new comes to light on a pretty regular basis that seems to change my work in some small way.

Thank goodness for that.

Here’s a song that I had never heard until this morning. I am a little out of the loop on much newer music, though this one is 13 or 14 years old. Getting better but still miss a lot. This song is Keep Your Head Up from English singer/songwriter Ben Howard. This video for this song has 37 million views. Like I said, I miss a lot of stuff. There is also a fine acoustic version that you might want to check out if you like the song.

And now, as if you didn’t know, it is time for you to git…

RedTree: Continuum– At West End Gallery

Every creative person is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory aptitudes. On the one side he is a human being with a personal life, while on the other side he is an impersonal, creative process… Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him. 

— Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

Yesterday, I came across the passage above from Modern Man in Search of a Soul from the esteemed psychiatrist Carl Jung. It really rang a bell for me and I wondered if there was greater context that should be attached to it. I pulled up a copy of the book in a PDF online and read well beyond the passage. One part that followed was basically an examination of the artist’s psyche.

I wanted to simply dismiss it out of hand, wanting to believe that it surely couldn’t apply to all artists.

Not me. No way.

It ended up being a very difficult read and not because of Jung’s use of language, which was very clear and direct. It simply struck too close to the bone and hurt. But so often that sort of pain comes from a realization of truth. I don’t think I want to go any deeper into that part of his essay. I am not quite that transparent yet.

The part that I did want to focus on was that is stated in this passage:

It makes no difference whether the poet knows that his work is begotten, grows and matures with him, or whether he supposes that by taking thought he produces it out of the void. His opinion of the matter does not change the fact that his own work outgrows him as a child its mother.

He goes on to say that after this point, the man (his term) does not make the art, the art makes the man. Jung expressed it in this way:

The work in process becomes the poet’s fate and determines his psychic development. It is not Goethe who creates Faust, but Faust which creates Goethe.

That really had my head spinning with all sorts of questions and realizations when applied to my perception of my art. I don’t know that I have expressed it clearly here, but I have often felt that my work sometimes goes beyond me in many ways. It says things I am incapable of saying and has wisdom that I don’t possess.

Much as Jung says, at one point I felt that I defined and created my work, that it reflected me.  I now have come to believe that I have been shaped and defined by my work. I am the creation of my work.

I am still wrangling with this thought at 6:30 AM. It makes sense in some ways. The first half of my life was a struggle with definition of self, leaving me most always dissatisfied with who and what I was.  At the peak of my discontent, I knew –without really knowing– that I was desperately lacking a true creative outlet. Something that needed to come out, something missing that kept me trapped in that web of discontent. I was searching for a couple of years and fortunately fell, literally and figuratively, into painting. Painting has created who I am as much, if not more, as I have created the work.

As a result, I am content now in my work and in myself, as the work has defined me.

This probably sounds a little wacked out, and definitely self-indulgent. Probably more suitable for a diary than a blog. I won’t argue that point. But in a way it demonstrates Jung’s point. I am a reflection of my work now. Not the other way around.

And I am glad and grateful for that.

Still doesn’t make sense, right?

Oh, well, that’s life, kids. Not everything has to make sense.

Read ’em and weep, as the cardplayers say.

Here’s song for this Sunday Morning Music that has been making my eyes damp for over 50 years now. I don’t know if it fits this post completely but it feels right somehow this morning. This is a live performance from the late John Prine of his Far From Me from his 1971 debut album.

Now take a hint from the song title and git…

Echoes of Time- At West End Gallery

People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born, the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And after all, what can we call our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.

–Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann (1825)

I used to work with a guy who was also a drummer in a local rock band. Great, funny guy. He used to say that he didn’t listen to music by anyone else because he wanted his beats and rhythms to be original. I didn’t argue the point with him but even then, over thirty years ago when I was just beginning to paint, I knew this was an impossibility. Originality is the rarest of things, an act of genius that is far beyond most of us.

I know some out there might dispute this. You might be right. But I adhere to the definition of originality that Goethe expressed more than two hundred years ago, that once we are born, we become the recipient of everything the world in which we live has to offer. Everything we read, see, hear, and feel combines and our creations are a synthesis of those influences.

The sparks of our creation are lit by the fires set by others before us.

I feel that the best that we can do is transform that vast store of influences into something that can be interpreted as our own expression.

Something honest to ourselves.

Something authentic.

Maybe I am writing this because I know I am not original. My work is built on a dense foundation of the influences of other artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, animators, cartoonist, poets, thinkers, teachers, and on and on. My own work is a complex product of the work of these many people.

The only thing that is mine is how I feel and express this synthesized mass of influence and inspiration.

I believe that is unique and authentic.

Maybe I am splitting hairs here between originality and authenticity, maybe the difference them being only a matter of semantics or usage. Or maybe hubris. I think everyone would like to think, like my drumming friend, that our creations are totally original. Hell, I would like to think everything I create is something new and totally original. But I know better, know that if I can’t be honest with myself on something as basic as this, I risk losing the only thing that I have that matters– my authenticity.

I don’t know if my work will have a life after my own but if it does, I believe it will be because of its authenticity.

I came across a line from a letter that the French poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote to a friend in 1884 that kind of sums up the importance I feel for authenticity:

Poetry is the expression, in human language restored to its essential rhythm, of the mysterious meaning of the aspects of existence: in this way it confers authenticity on our time on earth and constitutes the only spiritual task there is.

We all experience this world and all that has influenced us in our own unique way. I have felt for some time that my work was created primarily as a yawp, to borrow my favorite Walt Whitman line, sent out over the rooftops of the world, a way to let it know that I existed, that for that short time I deeply felt the joys and sufferings of this place.

Maybe deeply experiencing this world is, as Mallarmé put it, the only spiritual task there is.

I don’t know. I’m just a tired guy sitting in the woods in paint splattered clothes drinking a cup of coffee that is quickly becoming cold with three cats gathered around my desk watching my every move. What the hell do I know?

Now that might not be original but goddamn it, it’s authentic. The best I can do this morning.

Here’s a song that I kind of hesitated in sharing. It’s from Prof, a Michigan based musician better known as a rapper. I’ve been drawn to artists who are making music independent of the influence of record companies. I think they are making some most of the most interesting music today. Definitely authentic. This is Prof singing his Garden of Eden. There is a line– I have been really low down lately/I see extinction of experience/Lost in our phones we all lost and alone the extinction of experience— that I think speaks directly to this post.

Give it a chance. It’s real and authentic.

Now here’s a thought that may not be real but it is authentic– git.

The Answering Light— At West End Gallery,

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those
who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.

— Mary Oliver, Mysteries, Yes (2009)

Lately I’ve been periodically dipping into Great Question, the wonderful book my friend Larry Robertson recently released on the nature and importance of questioning. It seems like there is something to be learned or mulled over on every page from the many people Larry interviewed over the past several years in putting this work together. I am included in that group but feel a little overmatched by the stellar minds whose thoughts pepper this book. I’m just happy to be along for the ride.

One of the things that has stuck with me in my reading of Great Question are the Five Habits of the Mind. They are a series of five questions that MacArthur Fellow and education reformer Deb Meier developed to serve as a tool in dealing with almost anything on an everyday basis. Making a habit of asking yourself these five questions will serve you well. I think many creative people already do this instinctively but just don’t recognize it as the important habit that it is for them. Seeing the five questions on the page reinforces the habit.

I am going to include the Five Habits just as Larry laid them out in Great Question.

• HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW? is about checking your assumptions, something most of us are not in the habit of doing.
• IS THERE A PATTERN? reminds you to look for the recurring and compelling, not the distracting and misleading.
• Once your assumptions are checked and a pattern worth pursuing emerges, WHAT IF…? is your chance to get creative about acting on what the first two habits of the mind reveal.
• Getting creative is key; but falling in love with your idea or becoming blind, just in a new way, won’t help– which is why the fourth habit wants you to ask, IS THERE ANOTHER WAY?
• Habit five, WHO CARES? makes all of it about mattering. If no one cares about what you’ve seen or created, then it doesn’t matter.

As an artist, I find something in each of these that resonates with me, I believe that all five are habits for me at this time; but I know that there are occasions where I become lax and need the reminder that keeping this list in mind provides.

For instance, there’s habit one, HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW? I think we all sometimes make assumptions or accept things we hear and read without question. I do this a lot less than I used to but even so I still fall prey. I try to be conscious of what I take in and put out as to its authenticity and reality.

An even better example is that fourth habit, IS THERE ANOTHER WAY? Like many artists, I sometimes fall in love with an idea or a way of doing things. That can lead to a staleness that stifles my own excitement in what I am doing. But though I have been there, done that, it is probably the one habit that has been the most important to me and my work. Asking that question periodically creates new avenues of change within my work, something some of you have no doubt noticed over the years.

As always, I could go on and on. But I suggest that you go to the source and pick up a copy of Great Question. As I said, I often pick my copy up during the day and just randomly turn to a page. Without fail, I find something interesting, thought-provoking, personally helpful each time.

Here’s a song that may or may not have anything to do with today’s theme. I don’t care. I just wanted to play another Glen Hansard song after his death the other day. This perhaps my favorite song of his, one that is from the film Once.  This is a live version with his Once partner, Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová, performing as The Swell Season. Passionate and real. Good stuff.

Now here’s a Sixth Habit that Deb Meier and Larry missed: When the time comes, you must git.

Now, git…

Galvanic Memory (2002)– At Principle Gallery

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better. Silence is deep as Eternity; speech is shallow as Time.

–Thomas Carlyle, essay Sir Walter Scott (1838)

This painting, Galvanic Memory, is as its title infers is primarily concerned with those memories that burn themselves deep into our psyches. But for me, it also represents being on the cusp of eternity, when all that is ahead is the Silence and all that remains of the past are those memories that linger in that moment.

That is represented here for me by the door serving as the portal to that eternity shown in the glow of the distant horizon. The Red Chair at that moment is inward looking, still living in those memories.

Looking at it, I wonder if we all get this moment. Do we get that frozen instance right before death to focus on the what was before entering the what will always be?

I mention this now because I was shocked and saddened to hear that singer/ songwriter Glen Hansard had died in a motorcycle crash in Dublin at the age of 56. He was and is one of my favorite musicians, one whose songs and performances have been shared here a number of times over the years.

It sounds funny to say since he had won Oscars and Tony Awards for his work for Once, the highly acclaimed movie–later turned into a Broadway show– in which he both starred, wrote and performed his songs but I always thought he was vastly underappreciated. I don’t believe he ever wrote a bad song. By that, I mean every song of his was very personal, reaching out to the listener in an intimate manner. Like a friend whispering you a secret or an observation he wanted only you to hear.

Not the sort of songs that become anthems.

Many of his songs began much like that whisper but often grew and crescendoed to an emotional climax. One of the things I admired about his performances was that he was all in every time, never backing off the emotion contained in the song. I think this came from the years spent busking on the streets of Dublin where you learned that the way you connected with people just passing by you was to not be afraid to bare your soul completely. To give your all every time whether it was in a crowded arena or a bustling street corner.

There are plenty of videos out there of him busking in recent years in different cities around the world. It was not for the money or fame for him and artists like him. It was for the sake of the music and the connection it provided. To give a gift to those from whom he had received so much in the past.

A rare thing these days.

Here’s an example of his ability to fill a space with his silences and emotions. This is Paying My Way from a live solo session in a private garden in Cologne Germany from 2015. The song felt right this morning. He paid his way. Rest in peace, Glen. Hope you had that moment of reflection before you headed out that door.

You should be gittin’ along now. Out the door. No, not that door, just my door…

Anchor– At West End Gallery

The moment when, after many years
of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,

is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can’t breathe.

No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.

–Margaret Atwood, The Moment (1995)

I came across this poem the other day from author Margaret Atwood of The Handmaid’s Tale fame. It reminded me of my own relationship with the land on which we live. We’ve lived in our very humble little home here for about thirty years now, tucked away in the edge of our forest.

There I go, saying our forest.

Time has taught me the same lesson that Atwood stresses in her poem, that we are mere fortunate and temporary occupants.

We don’t own this land. After thirty years, it owns us.

When we were building our home, still under the misconception of ownership, we took from the land freely. I spent weeks cutting down the white pines that occupied the space where we envisioned our little cabin. I would cut them into lengths just small enough where I could drag them out and their limbs of the clearing for our home.

Man, I am tired right now just thinking about the effort I expended back then, more than a half lifetime ago.

We also sold some of the trees that lived on our hillside to finance our building. A logger came in and took about a hundred trees, all beautiful older oaks, maples, beech, and others. It hurt even then and bothers me still, but we saw it as a means to an end a sacrifice that needed to be made.

A few years ago, a logger who was culling trees on a neighboring lot asked if we would like to have him look over our property. He marched around marking all the grandest and most regal trees, many of which I had formed a personal attachment to in the years when my first studio had been up amidst these trees.

It was when I saw him put a big chalk X on a big oak that stood at the bend of the path to my old studio, I instantly knew that I would never agree to have someone come in again. The forest had already given me all I needed, had allowed me to take from it.

It was now my responsibility to repay that kindness.

That has been my attitude for many years now. We don’t own this forest. We are its caretakers and protectors, grateful for it allowing us to live amongst its wildness.

Oh, we’ve had to periodically have tree guys come in to cut down a few very large trees that were threatening to fall on both our home and this studio. They were decisions we did not take lightly, agonizing over each tree that had to be cut. And recently the electric company sent in loggers to cut back trees that had grown under and over their lines on the property. I felt sick after they left, feeling as though I had somehow betrayed the forest, even though it was beyond my ability to stop them from doing their job.

Even as I write, I can see a few big white pines about 50 feet from the studio that would easily destroy this space when and if they ever tumble over. The woodpecker holes in some of their trunks make me a bit concerned. I sometimes feel like someone living on the edge of a volcano, waiting for the next eruption.

Maybe it is a bit foolish, but I have the feeling that since I have taken on the role of the warden and protector for this patch of woods, the forest will reciprocate and try to protect us to the extent it can.

I sure hope so.

Superstitiously, I am a bit more worried now that I have put this out there. I guess each of us has to live with the beliefs we hold. Fingers crossed.

Here’s another song from Ren with the Big Push that I feel captures the spirit of this post. This is their cover of Praise You from Fatboy Slim. Good stuff.

Now, if you will, the forest has requested that I tell you to git.

Hey, I just work here and do what I am told…

As for omens, there is no such thing as an omen. Destiny does not send us heralds. She is too wise or too cruel for that.

–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

Going through old work there are plenty of these small paintings that I just shuffle past quickly without giving them much consideration. They often are half-baked attempts or simply flawed or, worst of all, just plain boring. As a result, whatever thought was present when they were initially painted is often lost in the mists of time and faded memory.

Such is the case with this small painting from late 1995. Whenever I make these little journeys back in time, I generally go past this one quickly though I have stopped a few times. At those times, I usually think that it was sad that it had puddled a bit in its sky, causing there to be darker blotches captured in the pitted surface of the paper. I remember this being one of the first time I had used this particular watercolor paper and that it had a number of qualities to it, such as this puddling, that turned me off.

I always assumed over the years that it was this flaw in the sky that kept me from actually completing the painting by putting a destination on the sign.

That made sense.

But just the other day I picked up this piece and examined it closer than I have in decades. I noticed that I had thought enough of this flawed piece to title it, which surprised me. The title was Give Me a Sign. That explained the omission of destination on the sign.

It was as though I was at a point where I didn’t know which direction to head or what to do.

Looking at the date scrawled in pencil in the bottom right corner, I realized that this was probably the case for me at that time. It was dated November 7, 1995. Just a couple of days before my mom finally succumbed to cancer. I had seen her for the last time a few weeks before down in Florida and she soon after spent her final days in a highly medicated state.

Her end was inevitable at that point and she hovered between states of being. A thousand or so miles away, I found myself feeling much the same, tied to my memories of her past while trying to imagine a future without her. I felt lost and impotent in that moment, not knowing which way to turn.

I truly wanted a sign to guide me.

Just the context of that title and date changed how I was now seeing this piece. It took on meaning and weight that had been lost to me.

My perception of that staining in the sky also changed. I now understood that at the time my distracted mind most likely overlooked the puddles that gathered allowing the paper to absorb the pigments, causing the dak blotches. I no longer saw it as a flaw.

Maybe it was sign in itself that, try as we might, we can’t control life?

Maybe we spend too much time looking for signs at the wrong times?

I don’t know.

I do know that I will look at this small painting, insignificant and flawed as it is, with much greater appreciation in the future.

Here’s a song that came on while I was writing this.  It’s Make It Rain from Foy Vance, a singer/songwriter from Northern Ireland whose songs I have featured a couple of times in the last several years. A cover of this song became a hit for Ed Sheeran but this one hits harder for me. Sometimes you can’t copy or fully capture the authenticity of an artist. This i sone of those times.

Boy, it seemed to hit the mark for what I was feeling on a lovely gray and rainy morning, one that we have been seeking for a while now in these all too dry days of summer.

You best leave now before I cry. You heard me– git.

Studio Window 5:45 AM July 27 2026

Smiling with pleasure, they went through their memories, not sad, old people’s memories, but poetic, youthful ones, those impressions from the very distant past where dream merges with reality, and they laughed softly, rejoicing at something.

–Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1867)

I looked out the window of the studio this morning around 5:40 AM. The light was just rising. A light fog. A patch of buttercups next to the bend in the studio’s driveway that leads out to our main drive.

Nothing remarkable. I have looked at this same spot thousands of times in the nearly twenty years I have worked in this house. Actually, probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions. Most of those times it is done as a mere glimpse, without thought at all. Sometimes it might come as a delivery truck is pulling up the driveway or a group of deer or turkeys slowly nibbling their way through the clearing where our drives converge. Or perhaps it is simply fleck of light moving in the periphery of my eye that draws my glance.

It doesn’t really matter why. It’s just an always slightly shifting scene that I have looked out on innumerable times.

This morning as I looked out at this scene, I began to wonder if this might be one of those images that is seen so often that it literally burns itself into your deepest memory.

The kind of memory that that shows itself in the series of images that might flash through your mind as it winds down towards its finality one day.

This sort of image flashback is an often-used device in literature and cinema and it has often come to mind through the years as I stop for a moment and look up the trees at the sky. It is always in moments of quiet with maybe a slight breeze that moves coolly over my face and rustles the leaves so that they make their light chattery sound. There might be the distinctive call of a thrush in the woods.

I often wonder at these moments if this might be one of those final flashing images in my mind at the end of my life.

I hope so. Just as I hope that this scene out my studio window is included.

I hope my final reel is filled with those scenes of calm moments when I feel connected to my surroundings and to the greater power of the universe.

I am sure there will be some more traumatic or enigmatic moments. I briefly told the story of how a fall off a ladder brought me to painting. That story reminded me of an image that haunted me in my dreams for a few years after, one where I was hurtling headfirst towards a large moss-covered stone below my ladder. I would often wake with a start just before slamming into the ground.

I sometimes wonder if that scene is cued up somewhere waiting to make an appearance in my final reel.

If so, that’s okay and fitting because as traumatic as it was, it got me here. And now here in this place I have images like the one out my studio window burning themselves deeply into my mind.

I’m looking out the window again right now out of my deeply engrained habit. The scene has shifted becoming lighter revealing that the fog has moved in a bit more. It’s lovely as always.

It feels it is part of me now as I am part of it.

Burned in deeply.

Here’s a favorite song that I hope will be included in the soundtrack of that final reel. This is a live performance of Souvenirs from the late John Prine.

I would normally tell you to git at this point. But so long as you don’t block my view, you can stay a bit longer. That’d be nice.