I was looking for a painting in my files and came across this piece, Time and Tide, from a few years back. It was a piece, an 18″ by 25″ image on paper, that I well remember but had lost a few of the details in the creases of my memory. I had forgotten how well this piece came together and the impact it carried. Even though it possesses many of my standard elements, such as the red roofs, it feels as though it is a bit of an anomaly. Maybe that’s why I had to stop over this image and look for a while.
The title, of course, is a reference to the old proverb, time and tide wait for no man, which is basically saying that all men are equal in the eyes of time and nature, that no man has any greater reign than another in those realms. We are all equally powerless before the passing of time and the movement of nature. It’s a message that I often see in my work, or at least hope to see.
When I stop to look at pieces from the past, I’m always looking at the differences in the textures and the way I’m handling the colors from what I’m doing currently. Sometimes I’m able to find something that I really liked in the piece, something I was using that really contributed greatly to the piece, that I was not consciously aware at the time. It was just part of the process. For instance, the texture in the open part of the sky in this piece was just done in the way I normally would do that at that point in time. But as time goes on there are subtle, unthought of changes in the process that after a time alter the whole feel. So when I look back what I’m trying to ascertain is how a painting of mine is different and if those differences are things that I might want to revisit. Perhaps I was at a certain juncture then and moved in one direction yet there was another direction available– do I want to step back and try that other direction?
That’s the beauty of art, one can go back in time in a way and for a while defy time and tide….
Redtree Times 