Redtree Times

In the Gardens of Glory– Now at West End Gallery

If thou follow thy star, thou canst not fail of a glorious haven.

–Dante Alighieri, Inferno (c. 1306-1310)

This line from Dante’s Inferno might be the first iteration of that bit of advice so often given now that it has lost the pristine brilliance of its words: follow your passion.

I’ve been fortunate to have been able to identify my passion then follow it. It took a while. It gave me clues every so often in my early years, but I was too dense or distracted to understand it was to which I was being directed. Eventually, my star shined too brightly for me to ignore anymore, and I’ve been following it ever since.

I would like to think that the show I delivered yesterday to the West End Gallery shows that I chose the right star to follow. And I would like to also think that this painting, In the Gardens of Glory, is a fine representation of both Dante’s words and the path I took in following my star.

It certainly feels to me like a glorious haven.

My personal reading of this is that I am under that Red Roof and those gardens that surround it are the product of my labor and imagination. They are my work, my paintings.

Their colors and kaleidoscopic feel translate perfectly to how I see my work. It sometimes seems that my work is a kaleidoscope with a certain number of forms and ever-shifting colors and textures. When I paint it is like I am turning that kaleidoscope. When I am done turning it and everything settles, what remains is a painting that feels much the same while also feeling very different. It has its own completeness and uniqueness within the scope of its elements and colors.

In the Gardens of Glory definitely has that feel of a kaleidoscope for me, with the bright clarity of its colors that seem as though they illuminated from behind.

And if I am under that Red Roof on that small hill surrounded by those patches of colors, I am very content in being there, glad that I found that star to follow many years ago.

Might my sun/moon represent that star?

I can’t say for sure bit it sounds like a pretty darn good guess.

The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery opens next Friday, October 16. The show is being hung today and will be available for previews and pre-buys tomorrow. The opening reception for the exhibit runs from 5-7 PM on Friday, the 16th. Hope you can make it.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details are forthcoming, but I will say that if you plan to attend try to get there early as seating is limited. That is actually one of my favorite parts of the talk, getting to chat with folks as they sit waiting for the talk to begin.

Here’s a favorite tune, Get Off My Cloud, from the Rolling Stones that has been living in the crowded space of my mind for nearly 60 years yet never gets old. I might very well be singing it under that Red Roof on that small hill.

Heed its words. That means git...

Joy in Every Dimension— Coming today to the West End Gallery

Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.

–Søren Kierkegaard, Patience in Expectancy (1844)

Nightwatch of expectancy…

I can guarantee you that will show up as the title on some future painting of mine.

When I came across this passage from Kierkegaard— a little light bathroom reading– it struck close to my heart.  My whole career as an artist has been a constant cycle of expectancy and fulfillment. Each show is a project of expectancy that tries me in many ways–mentally, physically, and artistically. When the work for each show is completed and out the door on its way to the gallery, there is tremendous relief in the fulfillment of that expectancy.

But as Kierkegaard points out, as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service.

The next project, the next expectancy, is already taking shape in the mind even as the first deep sigh of relief from the last is still hanging in the air. And if the next project, the next show or whatever, is not yet in place, the search for it starts immediately.

The nightwatch of expectancy begins.

That is where I am right now. The work for my annual solo show, The Jubilee Dance, is finally complete and ready to head to the West End Gallery later today. The expectancy has been fulfilled and a sense of relief sets in. The fulfillment of this show has been perhaps the most trying of my career, one that consists of having gone through cycle some 70+ times. Every single one has presented its own set of challenges but the ones from this year make the relief even a bit sweeter than any of the others. The fatigue I have been experiencing from the treatment for my cancer has been on hyperdrive which has made even the simplest tasks seem like a Herculean effort. And in the last two weeks a mysterious rib pain jumped into the fray. It was like I was in the ring fighting one guy and suddenly another jumps in and begins whopping on me. To continue the boxing metaphor, I had to take a standing 8 count yesterday to get an unexpected PET scan.

But I was not knocked out. I continued the fight and surprisingly was able to finish up the show late yesterday.

Sweet relief as the final bell rang on this one.

I am a bit more tired and beaten up after this one. And while I am enjoying the contented feeling of relief this morning, I am already working in my head on what comes next. The nightwatch of expectancy is on high alert. It has to be because I don’t believe I have finished my full service of expectancy.

I still have things, projects and shows, that must and will be done.

But that is the future. This show is about what been done. I am really pleased by the show I am taking out to the West End today. If this had to be my last show– and it is definitely not going to be– I would be absolutely satisfied. It’s a richly colored and visually impactful group that I believe will look great on the gallery walls.

But then again, that’s just my opinion. Can you really trust the opinion of a tired and beaten-up fighter on how they did in their bout?

Ultimately, you’ll have to be the judge.

Hope you’ll bring your scorecards out to The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. The opening reception at the gallery runs from 5-7 PM on Friday. I’ll be there. Look for the clown in the dunking booth.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Keep an eye out here for more details in the coming weeks. You know, the normal stuff, like drawings for paintings and such.

I chose the painting shown at the top from this show, Joy in Every Dimension, simply because it makes me happy for some reason. And though I am tired and beaten-up today, I feel somewhat joyful. Nothing better than that on any day.

Here’s a song that I think goes well with this painting. This is Art Garfunkel and his performance of the Van Morrison song, I Shall Sing. It was recorded in 1973 at Grace Cathedral, New York.

Joy in every dimension…

Blue Moon Mystic-– Soon at the West End Gallery

Every true artist does feel, consciously or unconsciously, that he is touching transcendental truths; that his images are shadows of things seen through the veil. In other words, the natural mystic does know that there is something there, something behind the clouds or within the trees; but he believes that the pursuit of beauty is the way to find it; that imagination is a sort of incantation that can call it up.

–G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (1925)

This new 20″ by 20″ painting, Blue Moon Mystic, is headed to the West End Gallery in the next day or so for my solo show there that opens next Friday, October 16. I spent well over an hour writing about this painting than decided that the words I had written did no justice to it at all. They were not up to what I was seeing in this piece and, in fact, seemed to diminish it.

It’s sometimes hard to write about paintings that strike a deep chord in me. You would think they would be the easiest subjects on which to expound. Maybe it is that there is something in these pieces that are not so evident, that seem beyond the surface.

A transcendental truth?

I don’t know. I would like to believe that I am touching such truths with my work, but how do you know such a thing?

I would say it is just an innate feeling, a belief or certitude, that rises in you but that doesn’t really count for much. After all, the wild-eyed guy on the street corner with the tinfoil hat yelling about the invisible little people following him has that same level of belief in what he is saying.

But then again, maybe he is touching on transcendental truths and we just can’t see it. It might be a thin line beyond delusion and absolute truth.

I guess the best you can do is just make work that strike a chord of authenticity within yourself and hope that that is something that others will see and react to. Maybe along the way you’ll be fortunate enough to stumble onto a transcendental truth every so often.

Once in a blue moon.

That’s all I am going to say about it. It may not seem like enough for this particular painting but at the end of the day this is a painting that has much to say in its own way to those who can hear it.

Let’s leave at that, shall we?

Here’s Into the Mystic from Van Morrison. Take my word, it fits.

Blue Moon Mystic is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM.

There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Keep an eye out here for more details in the coming weeks

The Moon’s Secret Garden– Soon at the West End Gallery

“Sometimes since I’ve been in the garden I’ve looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden – in all the places.”

― Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911)

This is the painting that graces the postcard for my upcoming solo show at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. It is titled The Moon’s Secret Garden and is 30″ by 40″ on canvas. I am going to miss this piece when it leaves the studio in a couple of days.

It has a feeling of mystery– or maybe I should say mysticism or the magic that Francis Hodgson Burnett described in The Secret Garden— that both rouses my curiosity and soothes me. As though the mystery I am encountering is meant to remain unrevealed. Just simply sensing that mystery and finding a question in it is all the answer I will receive or need.

Sometimes the answer is the question.

This is a painting that I could go on and on about it, but I think I will let it stand as is. It has stories to tell that I don’t know, stories contained in the eyes and minds of others.

I will add that there was another passage from The Secret Garden that I almost chose for the opening here. It speaks of us being part of the mystery that I see in this painting. It’s a lovely description that easily complements this painting.

“One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands out and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun–which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with the millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone’s eyes.”

I know that feeling well, of looking up at the movement of the sky’s light at sunrise or watching sunlight magically shift and glisten through the trees. In those moments, I feel less connected to my physical self that has an expiration date and more in tune with whatever unknown part of me continues on past that date into eternity.

It’s a lovely moment.

Okay, here’s a song that probably has little to do with painting outside its mention of flowers. But then again, it might apply. Who knows? I just wanted to hear it this morning so here it is. This is Cross of Flowers from Jeffrey Foucault.

The Moon’s Secret Garden is part of The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope you can make it to the gallery so we can chat for a few minutes.

The Natural Life— Coming to West End Gallery

Are we more vitally conscious than an Egyptian 3000 years B.C. was? Are we? Probably we are less. Our conscious range is wide, but shallow as a sheet of paper. We have no depth to our consciousness. A rising thing is a passing thing, says Buddha.

–D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (1931)

I wasn’t sure how to write about this new painting, The Natural Life. There are a lot of things in it, obvious strengths, that could send its meaning in a number of directions for anyone viewing it.  My own perception was that it represented the Red Tree as being not only part of the natural world; it was the natural world in itself.

I don’t know that I can fully explain what I mean by that or what I am inferring beyond it.

One analogy would be that there are musicians who play music, often at the highest skill levels. Then there are musicians who are music. Their instincts and understanding of music are part of their being, ingrained in them, so that nothing that is music is alien to them.

The music is them and they are music just as nature is the Red Tree and the Red Tree is nature.

Does that make any sense at all? It’s just after 5 AM and I am sore and tired, so it might just be a jumble of words. I did point out at the beginning that I wasn’t sure how to write about this painting. You were warned.

That thought sort of glides into the passage at the top from D.H. Lawrence’s final book, Apocalypse. The Red Tree, being nature and part of it, has a consciousness of all those things in the natural world that surround it. It deeply understands its purpose, knows how it fits and harmonizes within the natural world.

A harmony of being.

To Lawrence’s words, we were once like the Red Tree, enmeshed in and part of nature. In effect, we were nature.

But over the ages we have become less and less part of nature. Harmony has been lost. Our knowledge of the world has grown exponentially but the average person is less conscious of the natural world around them. It is knowledge without understanding.

I often think that the ancient cultures and even those farmers working small farms in the 1800’s had a greater understanding and consciousness of the surrounding natural world than we do in our time with all its advances in technology and science. Their very existence depended on this knowledge and their ability to find harmony with the land, water, and weather. We, on the other hand, give little thought to the natural world outside of how it sometimes inconveniences us with bad weather that knocks out our cable or internet connections.

This is beginning to sound like an old man rant.

It’s not, say the ranting old man as he stops shaking his fist at the sky. I am disengaged from nature as well, sitting here at 5 AM writing this in front of a glowing computer monitor, listening to streaming music. To be honest, I didn’t even look up at the night sky as I walked over here. Couldn’t tell you if it was clear and starry or cloudy. I can tell you that it was not raining and that I did hear the distant hoot of an owl far into the woods. I don’t think either of those qualifies as a consciousness of my part in the natural world.

Yet I aspire to have that consciousness. To understand my place and purpose in nature. To be nature, even in the smallest of ways, if that’s possible.

In short, it’s that aspirational aspect that this painting represents to me, even if I gave a tortured explanation in getting to this point. The elemental feel in its representation of water, land, and sky make me desirous of finding the sort of harmony I find in its lines, forms, and colors that allow me a glimpse of what once was and what might one day be again.

But then again, that’s just the opinion of the old guy out shaking his fist at the sky.

Not sure if any of this makes sense. Take it for what it’s worth. Here’s song as reward for sticking with me this long today. This is a favorite that I last played here in 2009. Guess I can play it again now without feeling that I am overdoing it. This is People Got a Lotta Nerve from Neko Case. It may or not have anything to do with this post. It’s your call.

 The Natural Life is 18″ by 24″ on canvas and is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. I will be there. Just look for the uncomfortable looking gray-haired guy ranting and shaking his fist.

Totality– Coming to West End Gallery

Everything matters. The Universe is approximately fifteen billion years old, and I swear that in all that time, nothing has ever happened that has not mattered, has not contributed in some way to the totality.

–Robertson Davies, The Rebel Angels (1981)

I’ve been contemplating this new painting for weeks now. It raises all sorts of thoughts and questions in my mind. It felt like it has real meaning for me and maybe for others. Maybe that’s pretentious to say something like that. I don’t know. Don’t care, actually.

I had a hard time coming up with a title that expressed what I see in it. I wanted something that pointed towards the depth and richness of it without trivializing it. Maybe I should have simply called it Landscape #17 or something like that.

Nah. That’s not my style.

What I was seeing was a wholeness in it, something that made evident the old maxim from Aristotle that say that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In the growth seen in the converging field rows in the foreground along with the setting sun, it has a feeling of beginning and ending.  And in the path leading up to the Red Tree there is evidence of movement and activity while in the Red Tree itself there is a sense of stillness and restful appreciation.

Each element plays its part, contributing in a small but necessary way to this sense of wholeness.

Overall, it feels complete in time and space.

A totality.

Yeah, that sounds just right. Totality. That shall be the title.

It’s one of those paintings that I would be proud to say represented my own totality.

Does it? I have no idea.

It made me wonder about the totality of any one of us and whether we can ever know exactly what that looks like. To ourselves, it most likely looks marvelous. Like me looking at this painting.

Maybe our totality has little to do with our own perception of self or ego. Maybe it comes in realizing that you are somehow part– perhaps small but necessary–of something greater than yourself?

I have no idea. I am probably not supposed to know. I am okay with that.

Maybe our experience of art is the one avenue that allows us a fleeting glimpse our own totality?

Maybe.

I tend to think so. And for me, I am grateful to sense it in this painting.

If that is totality, I am satisfied as I sit here on this Sunday morning in the dark.

Here’s this Sunday’s song. I am not sure it has much to do with today’s subject but then again, maybe it does. It does deal with the totality of one’s life– the joy and pain in our living and dying. This The Great Gig in the Sky from Pink Floyd‘s 1973 classic Dark Side of the Moon. This video is the winning entry in a competition that was held on the album’s 50th anniversary. It was created by Brazilian animator Bruno Mazzilli. I felt myself being pulled into it. Good stuff.

Now, I haven’t said this in a while, but I am tired and sore and have too much to do today to mess around.

That means, in a word, git.

Totality is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope to see you there.

Slow River Blues– Coming to the West End Gallery

People disagreeing on all just about everything, yep
Makes you stop and all wonder why
Why only yesterday I saw somebody on the street
Who just couldn’t help but cry

Oh, this ol’ river keeps on rollin’, though
No matter what gets in the way and which way the wind does blow
And as long as it does, I’ll just sit here
And watch the river flow

–Bob Dylan, Watching the River Flow (1971)

Another day.

Yep.

Another day filled with staining and sanding frames. Varnishing paintings. Doing little diddly things that seem inconsequential but are absolutely necessary. Maybe even finally putting some paintings in their frames, which means I am making real progress towards completing preparations for my upcoming solo show at the West End Gallery, which opens in a little less than two weeks.

As I described yesterday, this year’s show has been a rough go. Even when I am at the top of my health and fitness, the prep work for my shows is a physical grind. Years ago, I thought about getting some help, maybe hiring a studio assistant who could take on much of the burden of this part of the process so that I could spend more time actually painting.

But as much as I savored the idea of someone here to help me out there was one catch: They would be here.

I knew I could never have someone here in my studio with me, even someone I liked very much. I am a solo act in many ways. Though I have been the recipient of much assistance in my life– for which I am truly grateful– I consider myself fiercely independent. I figure I built about 90% of our home by myself. If a job seemed to require two people, I often figured out how to do it by myself.

After the fall from the ladder which led me to painting, I had already scheduled the septic tank company to come set the tank. I was too busted up to do anything but supervise. A friend came and did the grunt work which killed me. I wanted my hands to be on anything that went into our home.

That same desire has also applied here in the studio. It might be even stronger. I have always turned down any offers of assistance. The idea of having someone here in my studio would drive me crazy. I am even tremendously uncomfortable when people simply come into the studio, even Cheri. She only comes over here once in a great while and only for a moment or so.

As irrational as it sounds– and it does– I need my space to be mine alone. And that applies doubly to my paintings. When they leave the studio, I need to know that I have done everything possible by myself in their creation.

Does that really matter? Probably not. I don’t think anyone outside of me gives a damn and it most likely doesn’t come into play in their assessment of my work.

It’s just something I need to do. I began painting seriously when I realized it was something that could be mine alone, for better or worse.

There are not a lot of things in this world where you can make such a claim.

This doesn’t seem to have much to do with the painting at the top, does it? You might think that, but you would be wrong. I chose this smaller painting, Slow River Blues, today because it represents the ideal situation for me. It is the quiet and calmness that will come after the work for this show is done and delivered to the West End Gallery next week. A relaxing of the mind that allows me to simply sit for a moment and silently watch the river flow by.

In my head, I am already watching the slow flow of that river.

Well, I don’t have a river outside my studio windows. But I do have a pond (that I dug myself) just beyond the trees and if I stand on my tiptoes I can just see its surface.

That will suffice.

Here is a song from Dylan that speaks to this post pretty well. Plus, it has a bluesy rhythm that I hope carries me through the day. This is Watching the River Flow.

A reminder: Slow River Blues is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope to see you there.

Dance Me to the End of Love— Coming to West End Gallery

Oh, let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

— Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love (1984)

This week has been a rush of trying to finish up framing and other details for my new work for my upcoming solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that I will deliver at the end of next week. The show itself, The Jubilee Dance, opens the following Friday, October 16. You would probably be surprised at the amount of work that goes into getting paintings ready for a decent sized show. I’ve done 70+ solo shows over the decades, so I often don’t even realize how much actual effort it takes. I just do it.

However, the preparation for this show seems much more difficult than in past years, even in those years when I was rushing right up to the moment I had to begin loading work for delivery. The difference this year comes, of course, from some physical difficulties. I’ve talked about the fatigue from my cancer treatment here that has plagued me in recent months. That certainly has played a part in getting ready for this show.

But worse than that is pain in my ribs that sprung up in the past week. It is in the area where I received radiation. The pain and the limits imposed on my range of motion has made everything harder to accomplish, not to mention that it makes it hard to comfortably sleep for any appreciable amount of time, which only adds to the already present fatigue. Thankfully, large doses of Advil through the day help enough that I can still work at a decent pace. We think it might be a broken rib from the thinning of the bone from both radiation and the effect of my medication. Still waiting for authorization from my insurer for a PET scan.

But stuff is getting done. That’s the main thing.

This morning I got into the studio just after 4 AM and began to work on photography and titles for a few still untitled pieces for the show. One of the small but absolutely necessary details. I had just finished editing the image for the painting at the top, a 15″ by 30″ canvas that has been a favorite of mine since it was painted. It hits every mark for me with its rich color and atmosphere and how everything harmonizes. It sings for me.

I was trying to determine what to title it when a favorite Leonard Cohen song came on. The song was Dance Me to the End of Love. I knew immediately that this was the title for this painting. Maybe it’s just my tiredness, but hearing with that image in front of me made me a bit emotional. This no doubt came from a feeling I got from it while it sat untitled in the studio. It felt to me like it represented a certain dusk or ending of something. The end of the road, the end of time, the end of light or color– something in that vein.

The interesting thing is that this sense of an imminent ending was not sad at all. There is a bit of wistfulness, but the painting as a whole feels joyous to me. It is as though the day is ending, there is great contentment and gratitude for the beauty and love that has been bestowed before the darkness closes in.

The joy that comes in the dance of life.

How could I not borrow that song title for this painting?

I most likely have mentioned here in the past how I used to both title and judge my work in the earlier years. It has probably been a while so I’ll describe it again. back then, I would place the painting on my easel and walk away with my back to it. I would try to pretend that it was not my painting, that it was 50 years in the future and I was stumbling upon this painting in a junk shop or a garage sale. With this in my head, I would then turn and take it in with a quick glance. Was there something in this painting that would draw the attention and captivate this future me? Was there any quality in it that would make it seem like a found treasure to that future me? And with that quick glance, what was the first thing that jumped out at me and made an impression? What feeling did it immediately give?

It sounds dopey, I know. But you’d be surprised how effective it was. Well, I think it was effective. Maybe I am just a bit delusional on that front.

Anyway, it seemed to work.

Don’t know why but I don’t use that process anymore. There are probably a lot of reasons for that but I don’t want to get into them this morning. I have too much to do before today’s first dose of Advil wears off.

Here is Leonard Cohen and Dance Me to the End of Love.

PS- The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens two weeks from today, Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. I will be there come hell or high water, so stop in and we can spend a few minutes chatting.

Hope is the thing...- Coming to West End Gallery

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

–Emily Dickinson, Hope is the thing with feathers (1861)

I have had a proclivity for painting snowy landscape as of late. I wrote and spoke recently about the immersion of the process of painting these pieces, how it focuses my attention and distracts me from the world outside my field of vision. That might well explain why I am drawn to painting these paintings lately, but it might be more than that.

I have simply been in a wintry mood in recent weeks. I don’t know that I can describe what I mean by that. Silent and cooly distant? Pensive, maybe even a little melancholy? In survival mode, just trying to get by?

Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling for me, one of those for which words often come up short for me.

I struggled to find a title for this new painting that is part of my upcoming West End Gallery show. It’s one of the last paintings completed for the show, a small piece, only 6″ by 8″ on canvas.  it was not large in size but seemed to have much to express. Nothing I came up with for its title seemed to capture the feel that I was taking from it.

I finally got to listen to the title track from the new album from Rhiannon Giddens and knew that it was right for this piece. The song is her musical take on the Emily Dickinson poem, Hope is the thing with feathers, written in the opening months of the Civil War. The words from Dickinson and their delicate yet powerful treatment by Rhiannon hit me pretty hard. And though Dickinson’s bird was a songbird and not a crow or raven, I knew it had to be the title for this little piece.

The caw of the crow and the croak of the raven are music to my ears.

Below is a video of the song from Rhiannon Giddens showing collage artist Uzoma Samuel Anyanwu working on the large portrait of her that graces the new album. Watching his progress is fascinating.

Hope is the thing… is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens two weeks from tomorrow, Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM.

Hope– there’s that word again– you can make it.

Give and Take— Coming to the West End Gallery

Blessed are those who can give without remembering, and take without forgetting.

–Elizabeth Bibesco, The Fir and the Palm (1924)

Elizabeth Bibesco (1897-1948) was one of those deeply interesting people in the background who populated the early 20th century. I had never heard of Elizabeth Bibesco and I believe most people would not know the name. But in the rich political and literary world of the early 20th century, she was always somehow right there in the background, a kind of Zelig-like figure who always seems to appear in old photos jus over the should of the famous person in the shot, prominent but not widely known.

She grew up living at 10 Downing Street as her father, H.H. Asquith, was the British Prime Minister from 1908 until 1916. Her wedding in 1919 to Romanian royal and diplomat Prince Antoine Bibesco was one of the social events of the year in Britain, attended by the royal family and celebs of the day such as George Bernard Shaw. She was a confidante of Marcel Proust when they were in Paris and in England, she was connected with Virginia Woolf and other members of the Bloomsbury Group. She was also well-known in Washington DC society as her husband served for a time as the Romanian ambassador to the US. She published a number of novels and books of poetry during the 20’s and 30’s. She endured World War II in Romania and died there during the final days of the war in Europe from a bout of pneumonia in 1945. She was only 48.

Like I said, one of those interesting lives, the type that burns brightly for too short a time then fades into the mists of history.

For his post, I am focusing on her aphorism at the top. It very much lines up with what I consider my own belief, that we must be generous with others without keeping score or expecting something in return and that when we do have to take, we do so with great gratitude.

The world works best when there is such a form of give and take, at least in my opinion.

The new painting at the top is titled Give and Take. The blowing tree that I sometimes employ in my work has a number of different meanings for me. Sometimes, it represents resistance and defiance. Sometimes it represents how we are affected by this world and how we attempt to contribute to it. A symbol of giving our all.

Here, I see it as symbol of the balance achieved between our gratitude for all we receive from the natural world and our willingness and need to give of ourselves to others. It’s been on my fireplace for several months now and I am always glimpsing at it and listening to what it has to say to me. It speaks loudly and clearly. I am going to miss it when it heads to the West End Gallery at the end of next week as part of my upcoming solo exhibit there which opens on October 16, two weeks from this  coming Friday.

Here’s a song that deals a different sort of give and take.  It’s deals with what happens when the balance between the necessary give and take of our society goes haywire, when there is too much taking and not enough giving. It shows up in the ever-expanding imbalance of wealth and power between the haves and the have-nots. The balance between those who attempt to hoard everything for themselves and the rest of us, many who struggle mightily just to get by in what is often referred to as the richest country in the world.

There is no shame in the shameless.

This song is from Poor Man’s Poison and is titled Give and Take.

Of course it is.