Redtree Times

Reunion— At West End Gallery

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space that I occupy, and even that which I see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and am amazed that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then.

— Blaise Pascal, Pensees (1670)

I’ve been rolling this passage around in my head for some time now. It’s from the great mathematician/philosopher Blaise Pascal and it questions our existence at any one time or place. It’s something I have thought about quite often, especially when I was in the midst of doing a lot of genealogy. I believe it becomes obvious to anyone who has spent much time delving into their family lines that our existence in this time and place is the result of random series of bad and good decisions, losses and triumphs, missteps, strength and endurance along with a healthy dose of the pure luck that comes wrapped in serendipity. We dangle at the end of an extremely thin thread that winds back through all our time here on this planet, a thread that could have been sheared off any number of times over the ages.

We are the product of dumb luck. A random throw of the dice or spin of the roulette wheel has brought us here.

But even though that thought deserves more examination, it was another thought that came to mind when I was pondering Pascal’s words that intrigued. 

Are there people who are out of time and place? Are there people out there who were never intended to be who they are and where they are in this present day?

I know it’s a silly question, one that doesn’t have an answer. Even so, it came to mind. I know that there are times when I am convinced that I should have lived in another time and place where my thought process would do better than it does in the present day. I realize this is pure fantasy on my part, a result of my dismay and dissatisfaction with the state of the world. I recognize that any time or place that I might choose would present a whole series of unforeseen circumstances and problems that would make my being in that time as frustrating as being here and now.

It’s fun to consider just as a daydream sort of thing. 

But more tangible to this discussion is another thought that came to mind. As an artist, I sometimes finding myself wondering if certain work of mine is out of its time. This especially comes up when I think of the theme of last year’s shows, the Entanglement work as I call it. The piece shown above is an example from this group of work. It was not absolutely new work as I had painted a number of similar pieces in the past that featured somewhat entangled skies as almost mere background to a landscape. But last year’s work pushed the entanglement to the forefront.

It was the absolute subject and object of these pieces. However, even as I painted these works, I somehow felt that they were out of time, that their time a would come some day in the future when they would be properly appreciated.  Just not quite yet even as I gloried in them now. It would most likely be in a time after I die, if they can survive dumpsters and neglect.

Of course, I could be wrong. It certainly wouldn’t the first time. And after all, an artist’s opinion of their own work is not the most accurate measure of any works importance or durability. But I still wonder about being out of time and place when I look at this work. I’ve had a couple of these pieces here in the studio resting on my fireplace for most of the year. Thankfully, they are now behind new work because they had a habit of swallowing me and my attention, causing me at always ask when their time might come. They still feel important in ways I can’t put into words.

I don’t know if that’s good or bad or just some form of derangement beginning to take hold in me. Then again, maybe I am here out of time and, as a result, my work sometimes is the same.

Who knows?

Here’s a song that speaks directly to this thought. Well, kind of. This is Out of Time, an old Rolling Stones tune that I remember listening to on our old console stereo back in the 60’s. It’s one of those songs that is always in its proper time and place.

Peak Solitude— At West End Gallery

I have a firm belief in this now, not only in terms of my own experience, but in knowing the experiences of other people. When you follow your bliss, and by bliss, I mean the deep sense of being in it and doing what the push is out of your own existence—it may not be fun, but it’s your bliss and there’s bliss behind pain too.

– Joseph Campbell, The Hero’s Journey

We throw the word happy around a lot, usually without much thought.  But how do we really define happiness for ourselves?

It certainly can’t be a one-size-fits-all proposition, right? Your happiness may not be mine. In fact, there is happiness out there that saddens and maddens me. For example, those who find a level of joy and contentment in their greed and cruelty. We won’t focus on them today.

For myself, though I use the word often, I try to think more in terms of happiness and bliss. Happy is a temporary thing, something that visits like a pleasant guest that comes and brightens you day for a short time then abruptly leaves. If we’re lucky, it sometimes has an extended stay. But it always feels like a visitor. Something on the outside that comes easily and breezily.

Bliss, on the other hand is something that becomes part of you. Something that places demands on you, asks for sacrifices, requires enduring discomfort and even pain before giving its gift to you. You have to put in the work, bleed and struggle a little, to know bliss.

As Joseph Campbell says above, it may not be fun, but it’s your bliss and once you have realized it, the pain that it took to get there seems precious and blissful in itself.

I have been fortunate to know both happiness and bliss. I like happiness. No doubt about it. But I don’t expect much from it. Happy is the easy. breezy way but I know it will bail on me once the going gets rough.

Bliss, on the other hand, is a loyal companion that makes the rough patches endurable, telling you that there is sunshine on the other side of the clouds if you just hold tight and true to yourself. Bliss is a guide to the top of the mountain, one that tells you to keep your eyes on the path ahead and to keep moving.

Bliss is a reassuring smile in a storm.

As always, I am leaving at a point when much more could be said. Oh, I want to write more. Just short on time this morning. Actually, I’m a bit surprised this came out. I sometimes freeze up a bit when I am so time-limited here.

But at least there’s something to chew on this morning. And that makes me happy.

Or does it? I don’t know anymore.

Here’s song that makes me both happy and blissful. I share it about once a year and on those days, I replay it numerous times. It just hits the spot for me.  This is a remake from horn player Takuya Kuroda of the 1976 song, Everybody Loves the Sunshine, from jazz artist Roy Ayers. The original is great, but I personally prefer Kuroda’s remake. I think what I take away from it is that while everybody loves the sunshine– it’s a love that comes easy– the blissful know that the clouds will soon come to block the sunshine and that’s alright because their bliss is still there.

Happy in the sunshine, blissful in the rain.

Give Me One Reason– At Principle Gallery

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.

—Ernst Fischer, An Opposing Man (1969)

I’ve wondered about the concept of perfection for some time, given the way some folks are always going on about it, looking for it because they think they can’t live without it.

Not me, of course. Quite some time back, I came to that conclusion that perfection is not a human quality, that we are defined by our imperfections and how we cope with them. How we adapt and compensate for all the area in which we are lacking.

And that’s somewhat what the quote above says, as I read it.

When I read it, it struck me at once but I had never heard of the writer, Ernst Fischer.  Looking him up, I found him to be an Austrian Marxist writer/journalist born in 1899 who waved the banner for Stalinist policies for many years but in his later years– he died in 1972– Fischer came to regret his past. His memoir of his life began with a chapter that was titled Was That Me?  in which he expressed his astonishment at looking back and seeing the many phases and changes he went through in his life.

I think most of us could start our own memoirs with that same first chapter title.

I know I could, even though I feel that I am very much the same at the core now as I was in my earlier days. However, my actions were not always consistent with that core and often didn’t really reflect well on me. I did some things that were–how should I put this? — less than perfect. I was then, and am now, a walking collage of flaws and imperfections.

As are we all. At least, that applies to everyone I know. I could be wrong, of course. Being wrong out loud is part of that imperfection. Been there, done that.

Maybe it’s when we finally recognize– if we are fortunate enough to do so– what sort of person we want to be that we begin to alter and align our actions to what we are at our core. Then life becomes somewhat easier to swallow and our imperfections become less evident, not worn on our sleeves for all to see. Not the first thing people notice or remember about us.

I’m not talking about trying to acquire perfection. No, I mean that we just try to recognize the flaws that make up each of us and to accept them. Life is in toleration– of others as well as of ourselves. And in adapting to and overcoming our shortcomings.

Please bear with me here. One of the negative aspects of doing a daily blog is that I often post things as though I were writing them in a journal, unedited and just as they fall out of the mind. They are not always fully realized thoughts or ideas and will soon be questioned in my own mind.

It’s like reading an old journal written when much younger and wondering, “What was I thinking there?” or, echoing Fischer, “Was that me?”

You hope that, as we age and gain experience, that this is a less frequent happening in our lives.  But writing in this public forum, forcing out words each day, it sometimes, maybe even often, reappears. One’s imperfections become apparent the more you put yourself out there.

Maybe silence truly is golden.

Phew!  I don’t know what I just said here and I don’t really want to reread it so I’ll let it hang out there for now, flawed though it may be. Someday in the near or distant future I just know I’ll read it and ask myself, “Was that me?”

This post first ran back in 2010 then again in 2021. Some things never change. 

I did reread this post this morning. Instead of being shocked at some earlier stupidity being displayed, I was pleasantly surprised that the years have been kind to this post, that I am not embarrassed by very presence. Of course, this post only goes back 16 years.  by then I had already had a show at the Principle Gallery several years before that was called Seeking Imperfection. Any illusions of my own perfection had long went out the window.

However, I am sure that if I truly wanted, I could dig something out of an old journal from many years before that would make me cringe in shame and embarrassment.

As luck would have it, I don’t want to do that.

The only perfection I know now comes in small moments, one that come unexpectedly and reveal a simple profundity. It sometimes comes in a flickering of light and shadow through the forest as a bird sings. An unexpected smile from a stranger. Or simply catching Cheri’s eye while I pour her second couple of tea at breakfast and, in that moment, the richness of the many years we have been together, all the good times as well as the bad, flash between us, expressed as a glance knowing contentment.

That’s the only perfection I seek.

I chose the recent painting shown at the top, Give Me One Reason, for this post. It initially had a different meaning for me, one that had the figure on the roof questioning some higher power, asking for answers. A reason for living. But I now see it as someone standing out in the open on that roof, proudly displaying themself as they are for all to see. All flaws and imperfections on full display.

I guess it could be seen as symbolic of writing this blog.

Or being an artist.

Or being a human being.

Maybe. I don’t know.

Here’s a song from Little Feat that is right on point this morning. It’s a song from 1979 that I had completely forgotten until stumbling across it just a short while ago. This is Perfection Imperfection. See? Right on point.

Blue Moon Rising– At West End Gallery

Self is.

Self is body and bodily perception. Self is thought, memory, belief. Self creates. Self destroys. Self learns, discovers, becomes. Self shapes. Self adapts. Self invents its own reasons for being. To shape God, shape Self.

[…]

All prayers are to Self
And, in one way or another,
All prayers are answered.
Pray,
But beware.
Your desires,
Whether or not you achieve them
Will determine who you become.

— Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents (1998)

I read these verses several years ago in the sequel to the 1993 dystopian classic The Parable of the Sower from the late Octavia Butler. The books depicted a world not completely unlike our own right now, one torn apart by corporate greed leading to extreme wealth disparity, water shortages brought on by overuse and climate change, and growing unrest among the citizens. In fact, the books are set in the 2020’s.

Butler was pretty darn prescient in her writing.

It appears that prayers were answered for the greedy few who realized that their desires could only be achieved by making those desires the same for the masses. Once the desires of the many became the same as those of the greedy few, even though these desires could never be achieved by the masses, we became a different people.

Greed became good. More, more, more became our credo. Emathy for the unfortunate and the poor became disdain. We no longer saw ourselves in their plight, couldn’t imagine walking a mile in their shoes. We instead saw them as almost inhuman others who took from us, keeping us from achieving our desires.

We began to put style and glitz over substance. We began to make celebrities out of people who achieved nothing, who became our fascination by displaying the worst of human behaviors.

Conspiracy-driven belief overwhelmed knowledge, science, and intellect.

Honesty became a poor man’s quality as lying and deceit became accepted, even applauded, behaviors.

The greater good and accountability became punchlines.

It seems as though the prayers of a greedy few long ago have been answered. And we, the ones who will ultimately pay and suffer for it, sit waiting for those same prayers which are now our own to be answered.

Of course, the only answer we receive will come when we look in the mirror and shiver at what we have become.

Maybe then a new prayer will be born.

Wow.

Had no idea I was going to write this just now. Surprised me. Hope it makes some kind of sense since there’s little if any editing on these things.

I actually intended to focus on us as individuals, how our desires shape what we become. How those desires shape our decisions and perceptions.

How we must take care when taking a desire into our hearts. How while every prayer may be answered, there is always a price to paid in the form of unintended consequences. How we must try to look a bit into the future when forming our desires in order to weigh if we are willing to be changed in ways we may not be able foresee in order to attain them.

In short, any prayer is asking for change of some sort. Make sure your prayers are in line with the person you wish to be.

Nobody would choose to become greedy, cruel, uncaring, or hateful. But some desires create those things in us.

Be careful. Just saying.

Here’s a song in a somewhat similar vein. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know. But I like it and needed to hear it this morning. This is the Talking Heads’ Once in a Lifetime from David Byrne’s stage show American Utopia from a few years back.

Eldridge Park 1994

Far more disturbing than any spook house at an amusement park is a ride through the old hometown if you’ve been away for years.

–Jonathan Carroll, The Marriage of Sticks (2012)

Like cars in an amusement park, our direction is often determined through collisions.

–Yahia Lababidi, Signposts to Elsewhere (2008)

I was trying to find a quote or passage or something to start this post and discovered that there aren’t a lot of short quotes or passages out there about amusement parks. But these two both seemed to sort of describe what I was seeing in this early painting of a local amusement park, so I made the decision to use both. The painting is an early foray from late in 1994 taken from some photos I had snapped earlier in the year when I was looking for things I might want to paint.

These photos of Eldridge Park and a couple of other spots were, with only one r two small exceptions, the only reference material I ever employed in my work. This piece was painted several months later after I had my Eureka! moment when I developed the painting process that dominated my early years. I am talking about what I call my reductive process where a darker layer of paint is set down on the surface — this is a wet process– then most of it is taken off with either brushes or paper towel as you continue to flood the area with clear water, forcing the pigments to the edges and creating a semi-transparent layer of paint. This painting is a great example of that process, outside of the buildings that were painted directly on the surface in a more traditional manner.

Eldridge Park is an old amusement park in Elmira that fell into disrepair in the 1970’s and 80’s. It has a rich history that goes back to the 1850’s when it was first a private statue garden with a variety of statuary and a large fountain began by Dr. Edwin Eldridge. In 1870 Eldridge opened the park to the public, primarily as a picnicking spot for families. A large four-story building called the Casino was built, that offered long views and a restaurant– but no gambling. Eldridge had grand plans for the park but passed away in 1876. The park fell into disrepair until the city acquired the property around 1890. Over the next few decades, Eldridge Park developed into a real amusement park with a variety of rides including an old wooden roller coaster and a carousel with hand-carved horses and other animals.

Eldridge Park became a big gathering spot for the local folks, where one could get some greasy food, play skee-ball, ride the bumper cars then take in a talent show or go skating or dancing. Most folks of a certain age around here have plenty memories of good times spent there. As I mentioned, it fell into disrepair in the 70’s and 80’s and finally was no longer a functioning amusement park. In the past couple of decades there has been a revitalization of the park and though it lacks the glitz of bigger modern amusement parks, it remains a gathering spot for the folks in this area.

Walking around it in the 90’s was a sad and wistful experience. It was a place filled with memories and ghosts. I was particularly struck by the old skating rink/ dance hall that sat on a small rise above the park, next to the railroad tracks that back in the day once delivered passengers directly to the park. The building had two spires at each end that had an elegant bend in their roofs. I was captivated and painted the building a number of times in my early days in a number of different ways. That building is no longer there along with several of the buildings depicted in this old painting.

The park sat in the shadow of what was then Thatcher Glass, a manufacturer of bottles. This painting has a rough depiction of the silhouette of that factory with its distinctively angled cooling tower standing behind and above the park.

This little piece never fails to bring back memories for me. Some are of exuberant nights banging around on bumper cars with friends and others are of quiet wanderings in what felt like an abandoned space on a distant planet in 1994. The quote at the top really hit the mark for me. Coming back to a place that holds a fond place in your memory formed many years before is often as shocking as a ride through the old Spook House that once stood there at Eldridge Park.

I think it is this juxtaposition of memory and reality that attract me to this old piece. I also like seeing it in my evolved style painting back then. I can see that I was on the right path.

And it took me for a short while though Eldrige Park.

A note: Realized I didn’t explain the second quote at the top. It seemed fitting because so many of the things that led me here today were like the bang of a bumper car, from the literal bang of hitting the ground after falling off the ladder which initially led me to painting to the often-unexpected bits of serendipity that have marked these past thirty years. It’s been a fun ride in many ways.

The Burning Secret 

Let nothing be called natural
In an age of bloody confusion,
Ordered disorder, planned caprice,
And dehumanized humanity, lest all things
Be held unalterable!

–Bertolt Brecht, The Exception and the Rule (1930), Prologue

I’ve had this verse in my draft files for some time. Around two years, actually. I haven’t shared it up until now even though it felt applicable then. The world at that time seemed to be spinning so out of control that it didn’t feel as though it could get a lot worse. Man, was I mistaken in that assumption. I am not going to go into specifics today. I will spare you that. Anybody with eyes and a brain that works even slightly can clearly see what is taking place.

And it ain’t good, kids.

These line from Bertolt Brecht capture the essence of our current experience for me. Not surprising considering the time and place in which he wrote it– 1930’s Germany as the Nazi Party was on the rise. The lines are from the prologue to a play that I didn’t know. Doing a quick check on Wikipedia and reading the summarization of the play, I was struck even more by its parallels to our time.

The title refers to how things get flipped in such times, when cruelty and greed become the norm, the Rule, and kindness becomes the Exception.

Here’s that Wikipedia entry:

The Exception and the Rule is a short play by German playwright Bertolt Brecht and is one of several Lehrstücke (Teaching plays) he wrote around 1929/30. The objective of Brecht’s Lehrstücke was that they be taken on tour and performed in schools or in factories to educate the masses about socialist politics.

The play itself is short and lasts no longer than 60 minutes if performed in its entirety. It tells the story of a rich merchant, who must cross the fictional Yahi Desert to close an oil deal. During the trip the class differences between him and his working-class porter (or “coolie” as he is called in most English-language editions) are shown. As he becomes increasingly afraid of the desert, the merchant’s brutality increases, and he feels terribly alone without police nearby to protect him. Eventually when the Merchant fires his guide, the porter and the Merchant himself get lost and the water supplies are running low. The Merchant mistakenly shoots the coolie, thinking he was being attacked, when he was in reality being offered some water the coolie still had left in his bottle.

Later, in a court room scene, the evidence of the murder is presented, and ultimately the Merchant is acquitted. The Judge concludes that the Merchant had every right to fear a potential threat from the coolie, and that he was justified in shooting the coolie in self-defense regardless of whether there was an actual threat, or whether the Merchant simply felt threatened.

Brecht intends to show the coolie as a victim caught in the gears of the merciless logic of class warfare. The play, due to its investigation of class differences between rich and poor, with the poor ‘losing out’, can be seen as arguing in favor of Brecht’s Marxist politics. Brecht wishes to draw attention to the status quo, in which the working class is exploited by the ruling class, and show the absurdity of such an arrangement.

That last sentence says it all for me. I know that the wealthy have always had an oversized voice in how things are, but when Citizens United went into effect, allowing unlimited money to enter into the political process, we stepped on to a slippery slope. Scratch that last sentence– we went over a cliff. It was inevitable that allowing unlimited money into politics would soon lead to the corruption of the whole process. The system of checks and balances would be corrupted. The electoral system would be corrupted. As would the justice and judicial systems.

Money and power would rule everything with no boundaries or controls, and the citizens would be left empty-handed with little say in the matter and few alternatives outside of their now diminished voice at the polls.

I worry what the next few months will bring much in the way someone who has plunged over a cliff worries about the fall coming to an end.

Sorry to be a bummer this morning, especially when I don’t have an answer to anything. I just want us all to be aware and on guard. That’s something in itself.

Her’s a cover of an old Beatles song, Things We Said Today, from folksinger Mary McCaslin. It’s a charming cover. It came on while I was writing this and stuck in my head. Maybe it will stick in yours as well. Maybe it will wash away the worry in this post.

Who knows?

Now, three little letters– git…

As In a Dream— At West End Gallery

The poet is, etymologically, the maker. Like all makers, he requires a stock of raw materials — in his case, experience. Now experience is not a matter of having actually swum the Hellespont, or danced with the dervishes, or slept in a doss-house. It is a matter of sensibility and intuition, of seeing and hearing the significant things, of paying attention at the right moments, of understanding and co-ordinating. Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him. It is a gift for dealing with the accidents of existence, not the accidents themselves. By a happy dispensation of nature, the poet generally possesses the gift of experience in conjunction with that of expression.

–Aldous Huxley, Texts and Pretexts (1932)

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

I love that line.

That is probably because I have lived a relatively small life that, for the most part, hasn’t taken me very far from where I sit right now yet still seem to have an endless vault of stories.

I tend to be a mythologizer. That sounds like I am saying I am a liar, doesn’t it? And while I have been a great liar at points in my life– too many points–here I am not talking about telling lies at all. It is more about seeing the extraordinary in the everyday, seeing stories in those things we so often see and just blindly accept in our desire to get to the next day.

I am sure that most people living in the past, in those times we now see as more mythic than historic, didn’t recognize what was happening around as being out of the ordinary. It took someone to see the uncommon in the moment and express it. To mythologize the ordinary.

This is not always a helpful asset in normal life but fortunately it is of great help in my life as an artist. Art, after all, is about doing just that– seeing the wonder hidden in the ordinary and expressing it in a unique manner and make the viewer or listener or reader feel as though it is somehow their own story. To mythologize it.

Is it lying? I don’t think so. A lie is a lie. It lacks the essence of reality that myths possess. Is there embellishment. Sure, sometimes though not so much as you might think. The weirdness of this world doesn’t require much embellishment.

The bad part is that mythology is often lost to most people. Few people want to hear old stories of people and places that are only of tangential interest to them. I certainly understand that. I am sure I showed little interest to some storied my parents told which I came to realize was a tragic mistake on my part. On the surface they led what appeared to be normal lives. Nothing exciting. But beneath that surface was world of mythology that would soon be lost after they passed on. Fortunately, a few of their stories are part of my mythology now. But most are gone. After they had died, I realized how many questions I wanted to ask them, wanted to goad them into telling the stories that had long stopped trying to tell children who seemed to show no interest.

The same holds true for my grandparents. I was too young when they died to know what amazing myths their lives could render, especially my grandfather who was a professional wrestler and a stage manager in vaudeville in his early life. I found out more stories about him in old newspapers than I was ever told as a child. And I am sure my grandmother who grew up among the lumber camps that her father ran in the Adirondacks of the early 20th century had a world of myths as well to share.

It’s understandable that children or others don’t want to listen to these stories. Our parents and grandparents always seem boring and uncomplicated, hardly the source of myths especially when they are discovering the new world in which they exist. The myths seem irrelevant.

I often still feel the need to tell these stories, but I am becoming more and more tight-lipped as I age. It’s the natural progression of things, I guess. You see eyes glaze over enough and you tend to silence as far as storytelling is concerned.

I still try to paint with those myths in mind, however. Maybe in some small way they will live on after I move on. More so than the stories that inspired them.

Who knows?  Or cares for that matter. There is a world of myth out there waiting to be tapped in each of us. Most people have stories in them that they don’t realize possess great magic and wonder.

This is something that deserves more time and thought than I can give this morning. I’ve already spent way too much time here and I am sure I have made a mishmash of it.

Oh, well, that’s the story of life, isn’t it?

Hey. it’s Sunday Morning and that means music in these parts. Here’s a favorite from the Beatles and their mythic rooftop concert. This is Don’t Let Me Down. I last shared this song here right before the 2016 elections. I felt that I was, to say the least, let down soon after. Hope this works out better this time.

Hey, I can hear that they’re calling for you. If you know what’s good for you, you best git…

Winged Victory 1995

I like to live always at the beginnings of life, not at their end. We all lose some of our faith under the oppression of mad leaders, insane history, pathologic cruelties of daily life. I am by nature always beginning and believing and so I find your company more fruitful than that of, say, Edmund Wilson, who asserts his opinions, beliefs, and knowledge as the ultimate verity. Older people fall into rigid patterns. Curiosity, risk, exploration are forgotten by them. You have not yet discovered that you have a lot to give, and that the more you give the more riches you will find in yourself. It amazed me that you felt that each time you write a story you gave away one of your dreams and you felt the poorer for it. But then you have not thought that this dream is planted in others, others begin to live it too, it is shared, it is the beginning of friendship and love.

You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.

— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

The excerpt above is from a letter Anaïs Nin wrote to a young aspiring writer to whom she was a mentor. I was at first struck mainly by its last line: …great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.

That rang true to me. In my mind, art is how we deal with the wonder this world sets before us as well as its bafflement and frustrations. How we balance those things so we can find a modicum of peace of mind, enough to get on with life in a somewhat normal fashion, whatever that is.

That was the part of this passage that I was initially going to focus on today. There’s so much that can be said about how our experience and our perception of it shapes the art we make. But rereading the whole passage several times, I began to fixate on the last section of its first paragraph:

…the more you give the more riches you will find in yourself. It amazed me that you felt that each time you write a story you gave away one of your dreams and you felt the poorer for it. But then you have not thought that this dream is planted in others, others begin to live it too, it is shared, it is the beginning of friendship and love.

This hit me hard in a couple of ways. For one, in my early days as a painter, I used to think I was giving away a part of myself in each painting, that there was finite amount of myself that could be given. Take for instance, the painting at the top, Winged Victory, named so because the clouds in it reminded me of the famous statue of Nike. It was painted in the months after I had just started showing my work at the West End Gallery. When it was completed, I fell in love with it and was positive that it was the best thing I had ever painted to that point and might well be the best I would ever paint.

Foolish child.

I did show it at the West End but priced it at such a ludicrous price that nobody, even if it did appeal to them, would pay for a painting from an unknown with virtually no track record. I thought it would be a crime if someone had purchased it at the price my other work of similar size was garnering, that I would be giving away too big a piece of myself.

Again, foolish child.

I had not yet come to the realization that this giving of yourself in your work was much like the giving of love– we have an infinite capacity to give each. It expands to fill the need.

I have often written here about giving away my work at gallery talks, such as the one coming in September at the Principle Gallery, about how I receive more from that act than those who walk away with my work, how I feel deeply enriched by the act. Nin’s words very much reflect why that might be– that it is, in a way, my own dream planted in others by this gift.

That it is not a reduction of myself but is instead an expansion.

I feel my infinity in the giving.

Of course, it doesn’t make a lot of economic sense but that is a small concern when set against all that I get back in return from this act of giving. It opens up avenues to the better part of myself, ones that I could never have found or experienced when I was still that young painter, trying to hoard myself.

Foolish Child.

Here’s a memorable song from 1970, O-o-h Child, from The Five Stairsteps. They were a family band from Chicago that preceded the Jackson Five and were for a while considered the first family of soul. This song was a huge hit for them and has been covered by a number of artists. Great song, great message.

I am feeling generous this morning and not going to say the word. You know what word I am talking about.

Jimmy Lee Sudduth (1910-2007) –Nativity Scene

”– you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,
something has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have
a place and the time to
create.”

no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,
flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

— Charles Bukowski, air and light and time and space (1992)

I think most of us can relate to having found excuses to not answer our creative urges.

Not enough time. Not the right place to do it properly. Not the right materials or tools. Haven’t taken a class or workshop. Work or family obligations. Too many other things that need to be done first. Too tired. Too sick. Just not ready to do it yet.

Hey, I get it. Been on both sides of this. At a certain point in my life, I was overflowing with emotion and the desire– no, the need– to create. Before this point, something had always come up and I ended up either not following up on that urge or doing it in a half-assed way, creating all sorts of excuses for my failure to follow through.

Fortunately, I fell off a ladder while building our home, which in itself was a product of this creative need bursting through. I couldn’t continue building, couldn’t work, couldn’t do the wood carving that somewhat was satisfying my creative needs. But I needed to do something. Like I said something wax overflowing in me. So, I took some air brush paints from a prior short-lived and definitely half-assed effort I had made in using them and jammed a cheap paintbrush into my cast and began to paint.

It was all I could do. And oddly enough, it worked out in the long run.

Go figure.

But along the way I still found excuses to not work, to not fulfill my creative need. All the things listed above and many more. My newest is cancer. That is the ultimate card to play and I have used it more than once. I am too tired. No energy at all. Too foggy and groggy. Uninspired and worried. Too many appointments and other obligations.

While some of those might be authentic reasons to not do my work, it still amounts to a big fat pile of excuses.

In recent weeks, I have found that while those excuses might be valid– I’ve been all those things recently–it is only when I am at work that it all seems to recede, pushed away by the act of answering the creative call. I find I am less tired when at work. More focused, blind and deaf to the outside world. I have hot flashes every few hours and I only notice because I am suddenly soaked in sweat. Even that is quickly forgotten as I dive back into the work.

Like death, when the creative urge calls your name, you got to answer. No excuses.

It is a potent thing.

I think that’s why I have been a fan of Outsider and folk artists over the years. I find as much inspiration in their sometimes-rough efforts than in the most highly crafted piece of art that has moved me in any museums or gallery. Their work is tangible evidence of the creative urge, one that doesn’t care if the artist has had training or education, proper materials or tools, a fine studio, or any of a thousand different things that could be used as an excuse to not follow up on this urge to create.

Take for example, the nativity scene at the top painted by the late Jimmy Lee Sudduth. It’s a painting that really spoke to me. Sudduth was a self-taught artist from rural Alabama who died in 2007 at the age of 97. His drive to express himself started at an early age and, despite having few if any resources, was able to create expressive paintings with the pigments of the red and grey muds of the Alabama soil around his home. In later years he used house paints and finally acrylic paints as his fame (he was fortunate enough to have his work discovered by the larger outside world) peaked.

His lack of supplies or training provided no obstacles for his absolute need to create.

There are thousands of other Outsiders and Folk artists out there whose only qualifications come in the fact that they have heard the call to create. I get the catalogs on a regular basis from Slotin Auction which has a quarterly auction of Folk and Outsider art. I scour the pages of these catalogs. I get so much inspiration from these works. New perspectives and ideas from seeing how these artists deal with the same problems that the finest artists face– how to express the wonder of the world in their own way.

Here’s a song that just came up which seems fitting since it is from Nathan Rateliff and the Night Sweats and I woke up about 4 this morning after my own night sweats. This is Still Out There Running.

No excuses today, folks.

That means you have no excuse for sticking around. Git…

The Regeneration— At West End Gallery

What good are all the objects in the universe, if there is no subject? It isn’t that mankind is all that important. I don’t think that Man is the measure of all things, or even of very many things. I don’t think Man is the end or culmination of anything, and certainly not the center of anything. What we are, who we are, and where we are going, I do not know, nor do I believe anybody who says he knows, except, possibly, Beethoven, in the last movement of the last symphony. All I know is that we are here, and that we are aware of the fact, and that it behooves us to be aware — to pay heed. For we are not objects. That is essential… And with us, nature, the great Object, its tirelessly burning suns, its turning galaxies and planets, its rocks, seas, fish and ferns and fir trees and little furry animals, all have become, also, subjects. As we are part of them, so they are part of us. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We are their consciousness.

–Ursula Le Guin, from essay Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown (1975)

When I came across this passage from Ursula Le Guin the image of the painting at the top immediately came to mind. It was from a group of work last year that expressed the entanglement of all things, how we humans and all living creatures are simply physical manifestations of the greater power from which we have been formed. While we may be unique in the universe, we are not supreme in any way.  As Le Guin puts it, we are mere subjects to the greater object, drawn from the stardust and light and darkness that makes up all things.

As Le Guin puts it: As we are part of them, so they are part of us. Bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. We are their consciousness.

I wish I had written this as the statement for last year’s shows. I couldn’t have summed up any better what I was seeing in that work from last year than this short passage, especially when she brings up the last movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony which contains the Ode to Joy chorus. This image with that chorus ringing out seemed to fit perfectly together. I see this painting as being a joyful celebration of our unity with all things. And even the English translation of some of the music’s lyrics seemed to fit as well: