This is a small painting that is part of my show, Toward Possibility, which opens at the Kada Gallery this coming Saturday, November 6. I call this painting The Guardian Seat and it is a small piece that measures about 6″ by 6″.
It’s a very quiet scene and a simple composition that depends on the spaces between the objects seen here to carry the emotion and feel of the piece. When I look at this piece I am instantly reminded of a small story relayed to me recently that fits this piece very well.
I was told of a farmer who worked the fields near where the person who was telling the story grew up. He worked a group of fields that spread for quite a distance and out among them sat a chair where, at the end of many days, he would sit and just take in his domain, his guardianship. I can clearly imagine that image of a man sitting on a straight-backed chair with plowed fields spreading out from him in all directions as the sun lowers to the distant horizon across them.
Anyway, after many years of doing this the farmer eventually passed away. However, the chair remains in the fields. His family maintains the chair as a small memorial to the farmer. The person who told me the story said they always look for the chair when they go home.
A more lovely and fitting memorial for a man of the soil, I cannot imagine.
I suppose that is where the title for this piece emerged. This story gives me the feeling of a man who had a sense of guardianship and love for the land he worked, who felt himself as both keeper and part of the earth. There is a peaceful dignity to the tale that I hope shows in this little painting.
Redtree Times 