Well, I am done with the show, except for packing them for delivery. Always a little bittersweet, as I’ve noted before. As I wrap the work I get to take a last look at each one, for many probably the last time I really get to look at them. I think I’ve said this before in this blog that when you first start showing your work you want everything to sell just as a matter of validation. But as times passes, you begin to secretly wish that certain pieces don’t sell, that they return to the studio at some point to stay. There are different reasons. Some are reminders of hard work and effort put into making something from nothing or recovering a piece from a mistake such as spilled paint. Some have some meaning in the subject. Some are the products of a moment of grace, when everything is in sync and the painting literally falls from the brush and there is a natural flow and harmony in the work. It sings.
There are more reasons to want to hold on to the work but in the end, you let them go, let them find new homes and different eyes to see different things in them. Sometimes things I never dreamed. And that is the payoff, knowing that perhaps someone will find something in the work, even in the smallest sense, that will affect them and let them see something in a new way. Knowing that makes letting go much easier.
The piece above is titled A Time to Return and is a 6″ by 12″ canvas. To me, this piece is a prodigal son kind of piece, about the return to ones place of birth, ones home. Maybe it’s fitting that this piece is heading to Asheville where Thomas Wolfe wrote of just such things.
Anyway, the show is titled Now… and will be hanging in the lovely Haen Gallery in Asheville, NC, opening Saturday, November 22. Hope to see you there.
Redtree Times 