Redtree Times

“Exile on Main Street“- (2020)

I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that—I don’t mind people being happy—but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down three things that made you happy today before you go to sleep” and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position. It’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say, “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness.” Ask yourself, “Is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.

~Hugh Mackay, The Good Life (2013)

I was having trouble writing something this morning. Went down a lot of dead streets in the process and maybe found some useful material for a later date. But nothing for this morning and, in doing so, found myself short on time. I made a quick decision to do something I have never done in the 18(!) years I have been writing this blog which is to rerun a post from this year. Normally, I won’t run something again until at least a few years have passed. There are a few reasons I chose this particular post. First, I have looked at this 2020 painting, Exile on Main Street, several times in recent days here in the studio. It was from a short-lived series, as most my series are, that I really enjoyed working on at the time and really enjoy taking in now. I always find something new to focus on in each view of it.

The second reason was that this post mentions some things I brought up in last Saturday’s Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery, mainly the story that came before my fall from the ladder that I normally refer to as the origin story for my career as an artist. I don’t usually talk in any depth about the beatdowns and breakdowns that led me to art, but I did talk briefly about it last week. To be honest, it felt good to get it out in the open. Liberating. I had several folks comment on it afterward and thank me while relating their own stories to it. I will most likely go into it in more detail someday here. Small steps.

The third reason was that I just felt like some Rolling Stones this morning. The painting is, as you most likely know, is titled after their classic 1972 album. The Exile is also a recurring theme in some of my work, a concept with which I often self-identify. So, hope you don’t mind but here’s that post from back in January along with Soul Survivor from the Stones. Seems right for this morning’s post.

I came across the passage above from Australian psychologist Hugh Mackay recently and it pretty well summed up a thought that has been with me for some time. We downplay the value of those less-than-happy moments that are simply part of the human experience. We raise this idea of happiness high above us as an ultimate goal. As a result, we view our failures, losses, and disappointments as a source of shame, evidence of our weakness and intellectual deficiency. Something that marks us as being somehow inferior and incomplete.  Something to hide away and try to forget.

In my own way, I have long embraced Mackay’s concept that it is our wholeness as human beings that is more important than our happiness, which is a temporary emotion. I see wholeness as an understanding that life will give us both giddy highs and dismal lows, and we must be accepting and appreciative of both.

In my life I have had plenty of these failures, losses, and disappointments. I’ve went through bankruptcy, foreclosure, repossession, firings, loss of loved ones, and illness and breakdown– both physical and mental.

Did they make me happy? Of course not. At the time each was a horrid experience. But each carried with it a lesson that could only be learned from that experience. Each lesson brought new perspectives and understandings. Each changed me in some significant way, some more than others.

These were lessons that taught, collectively, that in order to find any contentment in this world, one has to understand and accept that these down moments are, like happiness, temporary and often meaningful. Knowing this, it becomes much easier to accept and tolerate– and even find humor– in the bad times.

These lessons were invaluable in becoming what I hope is a more whole human being.

Mackay’s concept of wholeness rather than happiness as a goal makes sense to me. Sure, I want to be happy. When I am happy, I now recognize and appreciate it for what it is. I accept it gladly but don’t expect it all the time. And when I am not happy, I recognize and appreciate it for what it is, as well.

And with those moments of non-happiness now, there is a sense of contentment and moderation that comes in knowing that it is just part of our being a more whole human being.

I had a goofy little anecdote that I was going to include here but it will have to wait until another day. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not.

Who knows?

Here’s something from Exile on Main Street.

Edgartown Lighthouse (2026)

From out the level darkness shot
One instant and again was not.
And then my friend spake quietly
The thought of both: “Yon crescent see!
Like Islam’s symbol-moon it gives
Hints of the light whereby it lives.
Somewhat of goodness, something true
From sun and spirit shining through
All faiths, all worlds, as through the dark
Of ocean shines the lighthouse spark,
Attests the presence everywhere
Of love and providential care.

–John Greenleaf Whittier, Miriam (1871)

I mentioned awhile back that I was working on a large commission piece. I had been approached by some folks out on the west coast for a large painting of a favorite lighthouse of theirs. Surprisingly, this particular lighthouse was not in their area on the coast of California but was instead the one on the beach at Edgartown in Martha’s Vineyard. I accepted their offer and have been at work on it for the last couple of weeks, finishing late this past Wednesday,

I have to admit I wasn’t too keen at first on accepting the commission. I am never comfortable painting to the specific requests of others and try not to paint well known places where there is already a preconception of that place in the minds of many. But as it has been with most of my commissions, these kind folks allowed me great latitude and freedom in how I rendered the scene, wanting it to be mainly in my style and vocabulary. For example, they specifically requested that I paint the mainland in the background as I wanted, employing my Red Roofed houses and my stylized trees as I felt were needed.

Even with the free hand they gave me in creating this painting, I probably would have turned this commission down most of the time. Just the idea of painting something so well-known would be enough to turn me off but, more than that, it would take me out of my normal rhythm. It had parameters that took me out of my comfort zone where I could go in any direction at any time with only myself to please.

But their request came at just the right time. I was finishing up work for the West End Gallery show that, by the way, just concluded yesterday. I was a mule in need of a carrot, something to motivate me before I began working towards next year’s shows. The challenge this provided and to work in a larger size– the painting is 48″ high by 36″ wide– enticed me, especially given that I was feeling pretty good after finishing what I felt was an extremely strong group of work for the West End show.

Edgartown Lighthouse Study

I started with a study for this painting. This is something I seldom, if ever, do for any painting but because this was a big painting I needed to do it for myself as much as for the clients so that I knew where it was headed. I did the 12″ by 16″ study shown here. It was slower going than I expected, mainly because the rhythm I mentioned took a while to kick in. It’s hard to explain, but the rhythm and pace of a painting are a big thing for me. My process has to flow in order for the painting to flow.

But I did find that rhythm eventually and was really pleased with the result. It felt like something I might do on my own. It was my work. I sent it to the waiting folks and they loved everything about it but were intimidated by the size of the sky in the study, especially since it would be such a large piece. I proposed changes that I could make that I felt would not greatly alter the feel and rhythm of the painting. In order to make the sky a less dominant element, I would have to move everything upward, while still keeping the lighthouse itself near the same relative size. This meant expanding the beachy foreground and enlarging the channel waters behind the lighthouse, as well as pushing the mainland silhouette up a bit behind the lighthouse.

After we agreed to these changes, I went to work. I was not totally convinced after the first couple of days. In my normal work, I know what to expect as far as the different phases of the process are concerned. I know when a painting of mine will inevitably flatten out and become dull and awful, that there is nothing to worry about and that it will soon come back to life. I kind of knew it here, as well, but since it was different sort of composition and subject in a large format, I wasn’t totally convinced.

Framed Edgartown Lighthouse

In the end, the challenge that it presented was its saving grace. It allowed me to use what I consider to be one of my greatest strengths which is an ability to figure things out and put them in order. To solve a problem put before me.

After sending images of the finished painting, one showing it in its frame, shown here on the left, the folks who requested this piece were thrilled. I have to admit that I am very pleased with how this painting turned out. It has a great deal of strength and a real presence and meets my main criteria, that it is recognizable as being my work. I would gladly show this painting in the galleries that display my work. In fact, there are elements in it that will no doubt show up in future paintings. For example, the beachy foreground which I find especially appealing.

Just a few more steps over the next couple of days and it’s off to California. I think I am going to miss having this painting around, not only for the painting that it is but for its reminder of the challenge it offered when I most needed one.

The Natural Life– At West End Gallery

When a reader finishes a wonderful story and lays it aside, he should have to pause for a minute and collect himself.

–Raymond Carver, introduction to American Short Story Masterpieces (1987)

Today, Thursday, is the final day for my solo exhibit, The Jubilee Dance, at the West End Gallery. 

Much like author Raymond Carver‘s words above, it feels like it is a wonderful story that is coming to an end and, as such, I find myself in recent days taking a minute or two to collect myself.

If it were indeed a story it was a satisfying read, one that has a hopeful, forward-looking end and one that inspired thought, both during the show and now, as it comes to a close.

Each painting might have been a character, each with its story to tell while still adding to the plot of the singular story that was the show. That is kind of how I have always viewed them, not as mere scenes or objects but as individuals whose stories deserve to be heard.

There were elements in these individual stories of despair and hope, loss and triumph, of bewilderment and understanding, and determination. Most were not fantastic tales. Instead, they often portrayed moments that revealed the mystery and grace in the mundane, moments of both empowerment and acquiescence to a greater power.

I think that is what art should do.

Maybe I am going on a bit too much this morning, before I turn the last page on the story of this show.

Maybe.

In my defense, this may have been the most satisfying show of all the 25 solo shows I have been fortunate to have had at the West End Gallery. I am sure that much of that comes from what has transpired with my health in the past year, something which has forced me to reexamine many things in my life. I now fully recognize that time and energy are finite resources and that meaning and purpose must be my highest priority.

I think it was on display in this show. But then again, that’s just my opinion. What do I know?

Many, many thanks to those who were able to take in this show, as well as to those who made it in for one of my favorite Gallery Talks.

Now, time for me to get back to work.

Here’s a song that is in tribute to Scott Colom who was named the winner yesterday in the Senatorial race in Mississippi. Mississippi had not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1982 and it was not since 1875 that the state sent a Black senator to Washington. The term of that senator, Blanche Bruce, ended in 1881, which means it has been 145 years since there was a Black senator in a state that has the highest percentage of Black citizens in the nation.

The song is Mississippi Goddam from the great Nina Simone. It was written by her in 1963 after the church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama killed four young girls. While it is an upbeat, entertaining song, its message of equality and justice is as powerful now as it was then. She sings about how people are always telling them to Go Slow and Do it Slow. That was 1963 and they are still telling people, especially people of color, just that in 2026. I think the fact that it took 145 years to elect another Black senator is testament to how those in power hold on to that power.

Dreams forever deferred.

No more going slow, folks. No time like the present.

This performance is from the Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festival in Antibes, France in 1965,

In the Gardens of Glory– Now at West End Gallery

And one of the things I find most moving is the way people with infirmities manage to embrace Life, and from the cool flowers by the wayside reach conclusions about the vast splendour of its great gardens. They can, if their souls’ strings are finely tuned, arrive with much less effort at the feeling of eternity; for everything we do, they may dream. And precisely where our deeds end, theirs begin to bear fruit.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, Diaries of a Young Poet (1898-1900)

Rilke seems to always hit the mark for me. His thoughts and verse often serve as jumping off points for my imagination. That is sort of the idea in the entry above from his diary written when he was a young man, that our dreams and imaginings are often richer and more real than reality itself.

That jumping off point for our dreams and imagination almost certainly applies to the art we see, the songs we hear, the poetry and literature we read. Each is in itself one thing, one reality. But it also multiplies into a variety of realities and meanings via the dreams and imaginings it spawns within us.

For example, a simple, colorful painting may be just what it is.

A rose is a rose is a rose.

But in our minds, there are no limits as to what that rose might represent for us or where it might lead our thoughts and dreams. A single red rose might send our minds to glorious gardens of flowers of all colors and shapes.

For my work, while it may be just what it is to some, I hope it also serves as jumping off point for those others whose soul strings are finely tuned, to use Rilke’s words.

That being said, today and tomorrow are the last days of The Jubilee Dance, this year’s edition of my annual exhibit at the West End Gallery. Hope you get a chance to stop in and see it.

Maybe you could use a jumping off point of your own today.

Here’s a song that I feel both applies to this short post and is appropriate for this Veteran’s Day. It’s Imagine from John Lennon. At this moment in reality, it is sometimes difficult to imagine a world without war, greed, or hatred. We’ve come to accept these things as who and what we are. Inevitabilities. That is nothing more than a lack of imagination.

Dare to dream. Dare to follow your imagination.

Dance Me to the End of Love— Now at West End Gallery

And what avails it that science has come to treat space and time as simply forms of thought, and the material world as hypothetical, and withal our pretension of property and even of self-hood are fading with the rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not finalities, but the incessant flowing and ascension reach these also, and each thought which yesterday was a finality, to-day is yielding to a larger generalization?

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles (1841)

In thinking about what to write this morning about the upcoming end to my current show– which takes place this Thursday– at the West End Gallery, I thought of this painting, Dance Me to the End of Love, that is included in the show. I have always seen a sense of finality in it, a coming to endness, if that’s a word.

It’s not sad or gloomy. Instead, it is simply a natural end to all paths, one that all things in this world must reach.

But more than that, it only represents the end of the path, not total finality.

There is no total finality.

With this in mind, I came across the passage above from Emerson’s 1841 essay, Circles. He basically writes that all we feel is finality continues onward, that there is constant flow of all things. In that essay, he also writes:

The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere, and its circumference nowhere.

The circle never ends.

Bear with me here as this is the quick, two-cent version of a thought. Emerson’s words and my own interpretation made me think about how as we go through life our paths often seem to narrow as Time seems to be coming to a point of finality. And that is what I saw in this painting– our perception of our path coming to an end.

But to bring in Emerson’s thought, I also see it not as a finality. I see the path narrowing to a finite point where it then expands to the infinite, represented here by the expanding sky. As a result, it is a painting that has an air of joy in that perception of finality.

Like I said, this is the two-cent version. Hell, it might not even be that. Just riffing a bit this morning as my show winds down at the West End Gallery on Thursday. It’s been a good show in many ways, one of which I am somewhat proud. As proud as someone filled with great uncertainty can be.

And that’s good enough for me this morning.

Here’s a blast of 90’s rock/pop that deals with endings and new beginnings, as seen in its parting line: Closing time, every new beginning
Comes from some other beginning’s end.

This is Closing Time from Semisonic.

It’s closing time here, as well, so you best git...

“Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”

–Charlotte Whitton, Former Mayor of Ottawa, Canada (1963)

That statement from Charlotte Whitton, from a 1963 profile in Cananda Month magazine, is right on the money.

It is definitely not difficult for capable women to do things twice as well as men, especially the mediocre men who have somehow found their way to the top of so many state governments, not to mention the clods currently running the federal government.

Check out the image at the top for one example. It captures this election in a nutshell.

We just have to do away with the idea that even then they are still half as good.

I think we are on the way to doing just that.

I was truly excited to see the number of women, especially women of color, who won major offices in this election. Gina Hinojosa in Texas, Dr. Amy Acton in Ohio, Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, Annie Andrews in South Carolina, Deb Haaland in New Mexico, and on and on, up and down the ballot.

I have no doubt that each will do twice as well as their predecessors. Probably three or more times as well. All are strong, capable, focused on the job at hand, and already veterans of fighting the uphill battle that is discrimination.

I, for one, am ready to give them their due now and even more so when they inevitably succeed.

Here’s a song that was huge hit for Cyndi Lauper covered here by my current musical obsession, Ren with The Big Push, the band with which he still sometimes tours, in legendary street busking session– the Red Suspender session– from a few years back. There are a number of great videos of covers and originals from this session on the streets of Brighton. I envy those lucky folks who came on this performance. The band and the crowd seem to be having fun. As it should be.

The Hallelujah Garden— Now at the West End Gallery

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool ya
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

–Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah (1984)

Wow. Quite a week.

Quite. A. Week.

Of course, the highlight was an election with results that have the potential to affect real change in this country. Real change, something other than the cyclical change that comes with elections normally where each side takes turns holding power. The results this time were of the sort that is a true mandate, an aggressive demand for change that is systemic. Change that puts an end to the rampant corruption, cruelty, racism, misogyny, and criminality that currently permeates the highest levels of our government.

But as I wrote, it has the potential.

The real work is ahead.

This blue wave has to bear fruit that is palatable, plentiful, and absolutely apparent for the American people. It must be laser-focused on both the needs of the American people and in holding those who are in the process of vandalizing this nation accountable.

It has to yield hard results and hold them up for all to see so that there is no doubt that change is at hand.

It may not be easy over the next two years but, as I say, the potential is there. It is a mission that must not fail.

But this week, like so many people who chose to take on this potential, I am still in the afterglow.

With that in hand, I was in Corning yesterday morning for my annual Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery. It was a full house and a great crowd. Seriously. Just a wonderful group of folks with many familiar faces and many faces I did not yet know. All in all, their closeness and warmth created an atmosphere that made me feel at home, allowing me to share details of my journey that I seldom disclose.

I think it made for a very special talk.

I don’t say that lightly. If you have read this blog for very long, you know how self-critical I can be after any interactions during these events. Oh, I can find a lot of things to criticize in yesterday’s talk, things I said that I would change, given the chance. But I think the overall tone and the interactions shared overshadowed any clumsiness or stumbles on my part.

Driving home yesterday, I found myself for once not beating myself up for my mistakes and missteps. Like the days after this week’s elections, I instead felt a warm afterglow of relief and joy.

A hallelujah moment.

I cannot be more appreciative for those who allowed me that moment. To everyone who was able to make it to yesterday’s talk, especially those who traveled a fair distance to be there, I offer you my humblest thanks. You made whatever was special yesterday possible. To Jesse and Linda Gardner at the West End Gallery I thank you for everything. Everything.

Okay, I am going to enjoy this afterglow for a bit longer this morning. After that I am back to work. There’s much to be done, both in  my studio and across the country.

Let’s do it.

Here is a favorite song from Leonard Cohen, his classic Hallelujah, and one of my favorite performances of it from k.d. lang. Along with Cohen’s original version, hers and the Jeff Buckley version, are off in the ether for me. This performance of the song at the 2010 opening of the Calgary Olympics is truly a spectacle, both for her vocals and the setting in a packed stadium with a crowd enraptured by the moment.

A moment of perfection. A hallelujah moment.

Joy in Every Dimension— At the West End Gallery

Communication leads to community — that is, to understanding, intimacy, and the mutual valuing that was previously lacking.
Community can be defined simply as a group in which free conversation can take place. Community is where I can share my innermost thoughts, bring out the depths of my own feelings, and know they will be understood.

—Rollo May, Toward New Community – Power and Innocence (1972)

It’s Saturday, November 7, which means that in very few hours I will be heading off to Corning for my annual Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery. It begins at 11 AM but, as the gallery has been stressing over the past week or so, it is suggested that you arrive early in order to make sure you get a seat. The doors open at 10:30 AM.

I chose the passage from the late existential psychologist Rollo May (1909-1994) to open this blog entry because the idea that communication and free conversation lead to community is one that appeals to my sensibilities. I like to think of these Gallery Talks as being about conversation more than lectures or monologues and I believe they do, in some way, create a sense community in those spaces where they take place. I know that in these talks, especially when they inevitably move to more Q&A and conversation, provide a space and sense of community where, as May wrote, I can share my innermost thoughts, bring out the depths of my own feelings, and know they will be understood.

I think that’s a big deal for anyone. I know it is for me since I tend to share a great deal of my life experiences, good and bad, in these talks. Maybe more than most people would feel comfortable in doing themselves. But those experiences, emotions, and perceptions are the basis for my work. Grist for the mill.

Seeking the Design– You Could Win This Painting!

I hope that those of you who can make it to the Gallery Talk later this morning can feel some sense of community. I appreciate the opportunity to share this time and space with you, to exchange some thoughts with you, and to express my gratitude, something I do in both words and in more material terms.

By that, I mean that there is a free drawing at the end of the talk for one of my paintings, Seeking the Design, shown here on the right. I am just going to leave that as the baseline for what will take place the end of the talk, but you can be sure that there will be some more substantial surprises on this front for those who can make it to the talk. As I mentioned in recent days, the events of this week may have made me a bit more generous than usual.

Hope you can join our little community this morning and find out if that’s true.

NIghtFlare- At West End Gallery

Knowledge would be fatal. It is the uncertainty that charms one. A mist makes things wonderful.

–Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Sitting here this morning with a distracted mind. I am trying to write this while at the same time attempting to think of what I might say at the Gallery Talk that I am giving at the West End Gallery. Mixed in are several things weighing on my mind, things that must be done before tomorrow morning as well as the presence of a very large commission that has been dominating my time this past week.

I am at a point with this large painting, which I will write about in the near future, where I am in sight of completion and everything is coming together. Being pulled away for the next couple of days, even for the best of reasons, is killing me.

That’s just how my mind works, which might be the subject of tomorrow’s talk. While I can’t say for certain how my mind actually works, I know that uncertainty and sometimes desperation, even hopelessness, create the focus in it that allows me to work. It’s an uncertainty in myself and of the world and a desperation for some sense of direction and order that allows something to emerge from the mist and miasma of the chaos I often sense in this world.

The question is: How do you talk about that with a group of folks, many who are total strangers, and make it sound reasonable and not insane? 

I don’t know that there’s an answer there. Probably good that there isn’t. I would probably reject it because that knowledge would take away the uncertainty I need in order to be able to stand up there in front of them. That’s why the short passage above from Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray rang true for me.

There is something exciting, even thrilling, sometimes in not knowing where things are going or how they will turn out. I have felt this often in my painting. If I know exactly how things are going to end up on the surface, I question why I am painting that piece in the first place or how I can change its direction so that that certainty is erased.

Taking away the safety net is sometimes a necessary thing in creating something.

Which is also true for my gallery talks. I sometimes come in with notes and an idea of what I want to talk about but more often than not, they are quickly discarded as the talk finds its own center for myself and the audience. Like painting, it feels almost a creative performance, which is how I have described my painting process– each painting is its own performance.

When it works, it is wonderful both in the doing and in the end result. And when it doesn’t work?  Well, I sweat a lot more to try make something out of nothing. And quite often something good does emerge.

Of course, I do have a safety net of sorts with my Gallery Talks. I know that at the end of each talk I can regain the confidence of the audience with the free drawing(s) for my work and the other gifts I often pass out.

Does that constitute a bribe?

Maybe but let’s not make a lovely thing ugly, okay?

I don’t know if this makes sense. Maybe that’s a good thing. I don’t know.

Seeking the Design– You Could Win This Painting!

All I have to say is that tomorrow, Saturday, November 7, is my annual Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery. It begins at 11 AM but the gallery suggests you arrive early to insure a seat for the talk. Doors open at 10:30 AM. At the end of the Gallery Talk, which generally last about 45 minutes to an hour, there is a free drawing for all those in attendance. Tomorrow I will be giving away the 16″ by 20″ painting shown here, Seeking the Design.

Here’s some uncertainty for you to consider: I might be giving away another one or two and some other stuff. If you want to know if that’s true, you will just have to show up at the West End Gallery tomorrow morning.

Here’s a song, How Can I Be Sure, from 1967 from The Rascals that has been a fave for me for what seems forever. Could be my theme song just based on the uncertainty it evokes.

Moved By Light— At West End Gallery

Let no man imagine that he has no influence. Whoever he may be, and wherever he may be placed, the man who thinks becomes a light and a power. 

–Henry George, Social Problems (1883)

This new 12″ by 36″ painting, Moved By Light, is another from my current solo exhibit at the West End Gallery. The exhibit, titled The Jubilee Dance, ends one week from today, on November 12.

While Moved By Light is a quiet and contemplative piece, I think it possesses a depth of meaning that goes beyond its surface. The kind of painting that soothes while whispering its message in your ear. What that message might be depends on who is looking and listening to it.

I have taken this piece in many times and have had multiple meanings appear to me. Each new reaction, each new meaning is as valid as the last. Some are obvious and some are not.

My most recent reaction to this painting is summed up well by the aphorism at the top from Henry George. Many of us often feel as though our voices go unheard, that whatever we do means little to anyone but ourselves. We cannot recognize how we touch the world and how the world touches us. As a result, we sort of just go through the motions of life without giving it much thought.

But when we attempt to find purpose and meaning– when we consciously think about it– we manifest our own light, one that is apparent to others. Those who live with purpose and thought emit a more radiant light. And as plants and trees reach toward the light of the sun, others are attracted to the light we emit. And even as we give off light, we are also still drawn to other powerful lights.

That’s what I see here, in its simplest form. The Red Tree is drawn to the light of the sun while creating its own light that attracts the trees surrounding it, symbolized by the visible tree trunks that seem to be in motion from this attraction.

That works for me this morning. Maybe it has something to do with the afterglow from Tuesday’s elections in connection with the words of Henry George. I have to confess that I knew nothing about Henry George who was an American political economist and social philosopher who lived from 1839 until his death in 1897.His writings and economic theories brought him great fame. For example, his most famous book, Progress and Poverty from 1879 sold millions of copies around the world. After George died from a stroke while campaigning to be mayor of NYC, his massive funeral procession, after a viewing at the Grand Central Place that drew over 100,000 people, moved through the streets of NYC drawing huge crowds that were said to equal, if not exceed, those of the funeral procession of Abraham Lincoln when his body was paraded in NYC in 1865.

George’s writings ushered in the Progressive Era that brought about many changes that we still benefit from today and helped bring about the end of the Gilded Age. He railed against the inequality of that era, observing that unchecked greed and acquisition can only lead to more and more poverty. His considerable influence continues to this day, and his theories seem even more pertinent in light of our current version of the Gilded Age.

Maybe it is the growing inequality and this election’s rejection of those who seemed hellbent on helping the gap grow for the very privileged few that I saw in George’s aphorism that connected in my mind with this painting.

Maybe. For today, I have to say yes.

Tomorrow it may say something completely different to me. As it should.

That is a quality I desire and value in my work. It is sometimes a mirror that reflects what I am feeling at any given time while at other times it is a window that lets me see and perhaps understand something outside myself.

Seeking the Design— You Could Win This Painting!

A reminder that in two days, on Saturday, November 7, I will be giving a Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery. It starts at 11 AM but we suggest you try to get there early in order to get a seat as seating is limited. Doors open at 10:30 AM. I always enjoy the time just after the doors open as people are coming in.  It’s a time when we get to have a little chat beforehand and I get to ask those folks questions instead of the other way around.

The Gallery Talk is usually a good time with some laughs, some serious thoughts, and a good amount of Q&A. The Talk finishes up with a Free Drawing for the painting shown here, Seeking the Design, which is 16′ by 20″ on canvas. There are always some other surprises which those who have attended my talks in the past know.

Hey, I am feeling pretty upbeat after the past few days, so you never know if I might be even a bit more generous than usual. You will just have to come out to the West End on Saturday morning if you want to find out.

The Gallery Talk and the Drawing are, as always, both free and open to everyone.

Here’s a song that I always enjoy from almost any of the many artists who have covered it. It’s This Little Light of Mine and this live version from Neko Case is a particular favorite of mine.

Open your mind and let your light shine…