Redtree Times

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:

RedTree: Continuum– At West End Gallery

The future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory.

–Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now (1997)

I know that Eckhart Tolle is right with the statement above. But like they say, easier said than done. I don’t know what it says about me, but I tend to anticipate the worst. My reasoning is that if it comes out better than expected I am both thrilled and relieved and if it does go as I feared it might, I am not overly disappointed since I knew it was going to turn out that way all along.

That sounds pretty screwed up, even to me.

But so far, it has worked out fairly well, outside of the overwhelming sense of dread and anxiety that haunts my every waking moment.

I am just kidding, of course. We all have our own ways of dealing with the future. My way is not as crazy in practice as it sounds. At least I think it isn’t. But it’s how I deal with things. You do it your way, I’ll do it mine.

We all deal with the future in our own way and that’s okay. It’s not a one-size-fits-all situation.

That was bunch of words to get to my upcoming events for this fall. This year I am choosing a combination of both anxiety and hope for my outlook on these events. Figure I have all my bases covered that way.

The first event for the fall is my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery on Saturday, September 26th. The talk begins at 1 PM at the gallery in Alexandria, VA. I’ve been doing this Gallery Talk every year since 2003 with only year missed due to the pandemic and it is usually a lot of fun. Some talk by me (ugh), lots of questions and some answers though even those are suspect, some laughs, and some prizes including the now highly anticipated Painting Giveaway. Hope you can put this on your calendar.

In October, I have my annual solo exhibit at the West End Gallery in Corning. This year’s show begins with an Opening Reception that runs from 5-7 PM on Friday, October 16th.

This year marks my 25th solo show at the West End Gallery. With that mind I am titling this show Silver Jubilee, the normal designation for a 25th anniversary. The silver in this context is said to symbolize strength, radiance, and resilience. I would like to think those qualities have been well represented in my work over these past 25 years.

There is then my annual Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Again, talk, questions, laughs, sometimes some tears, and prizes. I am in the process of choosing a painting to give away at each talk.

Hope you can make it to one or more of the events. As I said above, while I hope it goes well I still fear it won’t.

So far, so good but only time will tell.

That was a somewhat subtle lead-in to a song, Time Will Tell, from Gregory Alan Isakov. Good stuff, as always, from him.

Your time here has come to an end for today. Do I need to say it?

Okay, you asked for it--git.

Eyvind Earle- Santa Ynez Memory (1998)

Then very slowly I go to slightly lighter colors until little by little, the forms begin to take shape and I start to see what is happening. Since I never plan in advance, I simply let myself be led by instinct, taste and intuition. And it is in this manner that I find myself creating visions that I have never before imagined. And little by little certain color effects develop that excite me and I find the painting itself leading me on and I become only an instrument of a greater, wiser force…or being…or intelligence than I myself am.

–Eyvind Earle

Really didn’t feel like writing this morning. Very tired. Sunday was the best day I have had in months, feeling bright and close to normal for a change. Painting has been going great, thankfully, creating its own energy. Thought I might be moving past this level of fatigue. But after a busy morning of painting and then retrieving my work from the Gmeiner show (thanks, Melina at the Gmeiner!) I crashed hard in the evening yesterday, like I had been beaten with a bag of oranges, which is a reference to a scene from the film The Grifters. Left me groggy, achy, and kind of blah this morning.

But I was determined to post something. I have a long streak that I didn’t want to end until I want it to end. And that is not today. So, I looked through some old posts and came across the one below from 2018. [ I was getting ready to hit the publish button when I discovered that I had rewritten this and shared it in 2024. Well, it’s here today and it’s going to stay.] It featured the work of Eyvind Earle which gives everyone a break from my work. Believe me, you need a break. Plus, it was written on a day in 2018 when I didn’t feel like writing as well. Plus, the post was about that wonderful state of being that sometimes comes when painting. It is a feeling I have been fortunate to experience in recent weeks, one that I am counting on later this morning to reinvigorate me.

Seemed to fit the bill this morning. The post from 2018 [rewritten in 2024] along is below with an added song from the late blues legend John Lee Hooker with Santana, The Healer from 1989. Looking for some of that healing power today and kicking it off with some John Lee seems like just the prescription I need.

No gits today. Too pooped to kick your butts out the back door…

I have discussed my appreciation for Eyvind Earle on this blog in the past. Earle was a celebrated artist/illustrator who died in 2000 at age 84.  He was a child prodigy and had his first solo show at a gallery at the age of 14. He exhibited his work in gallery shows for many years but gained his ultimate fame with his popular stylized Christmas cards through the years and with his time spent working with Walt Disney in the 50’s and 60’s as a background artist. He was responsible for the look of many of the animated films of that time from Disney, including the classic Sleeping Beauty.

I have a massive two volume set of the works and writings of Earle’s work that I often pull from the shelf. There’s much I am drawn to in the graphic works from Earle– the colors and the rhythm of his landscapes, for example.

I am also attracted to the great clarity in his work. The compositions are often complex in design but come across as simple, a duality that I really find appealing. The color is bold and could be a little sharp in tone if it weren’t harmonized so masterfully within the picture plane. He is a pure genius at handling harmony and contrast– another duality that strikes me.

I also like the fact that Earle was an unabashed landscape artist, feeling no desire to express himself through figurative work. He found total expression in his handling of the landscape around him, often depicting the open spaces and coastlines of California. They are not mere scenes but have emotion and a depth that goes well beyond the surface, another aspect that appeals greatly to my desires for my own work.

The passage at the top briefly describing his process further links my attraction to Earle and his work. As he describes his process, I am struck by how similarly we describe how we work such as not planning anything in advance, working from light to dark colors and following the excitement of certain colors until the work seems to be taken out of our hands.

Until we become instruments.

I have often described the process and the final creation as being beyond me, the whole of the piece being more than the sum of all the parts I call myself. I have also described the sense of purpose I feel from these pieces, how I feel connected to something greater.

I can’t ever recollect using that term, instrument, before, maybe because it sounds a little presumptuous. But it does line up with what I have described in the past. And to read that Eyvind Earle felt much the same way about his work is comforting, especially on those mornings when I feel far removed from anything close to a greater force. Just knowing that the work might take me to that point where I transform into an instrument for something beyond myself makes the day seem easier to begin.

Exiles: Cain 1995

From the moment that man believes neither in God nor in immortal life, he becomes ‘responsible for everything alive, for everything that, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer from life.’ It is he, and he alone, who must discover law and order. Then the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, the most painful, the most heartbreaking question, that of the heart which asks itself: where can I feel at home?

― Albert Camus, The Rebel (1951)

There is so much I could say about this small painting from my Exiles series of 1995-96, which dealt with, as I have often mentioned here, the death of my mother from cancer at that time. It holds so much meaning for me on several levels, from the separation I fel based on t in NY as she was dying in Florida to the general feeling I often felt of being forever out of place in my life up to that point, a stranger in strange lands.

The title is on the surface based on the biblical story of the original exile, Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, who was expelled from his homeland after slaying his brother, Abel, forced to create a new world in which to exist, never to return. But more than that obvious reference, it was primarily based on the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse, a book I have mentioned here a number of times over the years.

It was book I stumbled on when I was going through a desperate time many years ago. It changed the arc of my life very much in that moment.

In Demian, Hesse uses the Mark of Cain as a symbol for those seeking the truth in themselves. In the biblical story, after Cain kills Abel, he is exiled by God to wander the world. God places a special mark on Cain to protect him, warning that anyone who harms him will face a severe sevenfold vengeance. While I was going through this trying time I very much felt like Cain the Exile and references to that name began to show up all the time. It felt like there was some sort of synchronicity taking place.

Hesse also discusses the dual nature of man in Demian, an idea which has had a very formative aspect in my growth as a painter. The idea of opposing forces, light and dark, being contained in one element, one being, always struck a chord in me. It also made sense in light of the struggles that I observed in myself and many others.

In the book Hesse also wrote a sentence that resonated like a gigantic bell tolling for me: Whoever wants to be born, must first destroy a world.

It was revelation, one that still echoes in my mind nearly every day. I think shows up in the gaunt face of the Cain in this painting. He has destroyed the world he left behind, never again able to return to it. I see it as a mixture of pain and strength born of resignation to his fate. The same sort I saw in my mom’s face at the time when she was facing her own exile from this world.

Pain of this life but without fear for what was to come.

For me, that time felt like, as Camus wrote above: the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, the most painful, the most heartbreaking question, that of the heart which asks itself: where can I feel at home?

This is hard to write without delving even deeper so that it makes sense for you. Not sure I am willing to do that. In fact, don’t know why I even began writing this today. I just saw that painting this morning and felt like it had to be mentioned and seen, if only for myself.

Thankfully, I seldom ask where I can feel at home anymore. Though the search for justification never ceases and there is that same aimless nostalgia at times, I feel somewhat at home in this world these days.

What more is there?

I am sharing a cover of a favorite song, Hold On, from the Alabama Shakes performed by my current obsession, Ren, with the Big Push during a busking session on the streets of Brighton, England just last year.  The message seems relevant.

Now, make like an exile and git…

Time Reverberation— At the Gmeiner Art Center— Show Ends Today!

Imagination, as opposed to fantasy, is the ability to see the other thing, what one might call, to use those old-fashioned words, nature, reality, the world… Imagination is a kind of freedom, a renewed ability to perceive and express the truth.

–Iris Murdoch, Existentialists and Mystics: Writings on Philosophy and Literature (1997)

I wrestled with this passage from author Iris Murdoch (1919-1999) for quite a while. It has been sitting in a draft file for several years with just this passage on the page. I was pretty sure I understood its meaning. Art is often described as being the manner in which we reveal the truth that resides within our reach and sight but remains hidden, unseen.  The mood and emotion contained in the everyday.

The hidden sacred in the ordinary.

My struggle with her words came in my own concern that the landscapes created in my work verged on the fantastic, something apart from human reality. Could these inner landscapes as I call them reveal authentic human truths?

This was a concern for me for a long time. Granted, it was an esoteric one, A matter of my own self-perception, not something that changed my work in any way.

And it was this fact that the work wasn’t affected by my concerns that finally convinced me of the ability of human truths to be exist in my imagined world. For though it was of the mind, it was built on the reality of my experience in this world– all that I felt, saw, heard, and did. It was– and is–a kind of an enhanced reality.

In my mind I always perceived the landscapes I created as being real and of this world. Here and now, in this moment. And I think most people see them in that same way, that despite fields that are sometimes in colors they might not normally see and a Red Tree that sometimes towers over the surrounding landscaped peppered with Red Roofed house with no doors or windows, it comes across as reality.

Perhaps it is the reality as seen in our dreams. Who hasn’t had dreams where upon waking we are convinced that that dreamed place was real? And don’t those truths that are revealed to us in these dreams seem absolutely possible and self-evident?  And even though the truths seem to evaporate in mere moments, there existence lingers with us.

Maybe dreams and art serve much the same purpose; to make us aware of the truths before us that we fail to see.

Hey, works for me right now.

For this Sunday Morning Music, I am sharing a song that I was surprised I had never shared here before since I had used its title for a painting many years ago. The title is I Dream a Highway from the ethereal Gillian Welch. Then I remembered why I had not shared it before. It’s about 14 minutes long. Don’t let that scare you. Please give it a few minutes. The first comment under this video is How can a 14 minute song still not be long enough? I immediately nodded in agreement on reading that. For me, it has the sound and tone of dreams, and it soon becomes a soothing meditation. If I wore a Fit, I would bet my heartbeat drops quite a bit when I listen to this song.

Hey, it either this or two minutes of the Ramones cranking out Beat on the Brat. If you don’t like it, you know the routine by now–git.