Redtree Times

This is a new piece that I recently completed.  It’s one of the  pieces that will be included in my upcoming show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA which opens June 12.  This will be my tenth show at the Principle and we are calling this show Redtree Redux: Ten Years Along, which echoes the title of my first show there in 2000, Redtree.          

This piece, still untitled, really strikes me at the moment.  It’s kind of where where I envisioned my work going when I was still working on that first show ten years back.  It has the quiet I want my work to have along with a dramatic contrast as seen in the sky.  There is a path that enters the picture plane and seems to end or disappear, enigmatically.  I find myself liking that little question that is raised by the path.

There’s also an austerity in the landscape that speaks to me and gives me that feeling of being awash in the air and light of a wide open space.  The absence of other trees or structures gives the central figure added prominence.  

I am still taking in this painting and still figuring out what I’m seeing in it beyond the immediate visceral impact.  It’s this reading-the-tea-leaves moment that I really enjoy most in the process.  When I’m starting a piece I’m not sure what’s going to emerge and as it proceeds there are still moments when the painting’s final appearance and feel  are still subject to decisions to come.  But when it has reached that feeling of completion, that point when I sense a certain rightness, it has left my hands or mind and takes on a new dimension of its own, having its own momentum and life.  It’s at this point that I get to look at it with different eyes and in that there is a certain fulfillment and satisfaction.  

So I’ll periodically look at this piece over the weeks ahead and continue to absorb it before it leaves my hands for what will probably be the final time in June.  And that’s okay because I will have received what I need from it in that time and it will better serve someone else in a new environment, hopefully giving them the same feelings that struck me.