Redtree Times

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.

—Matsuo Basho

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I’ve been looking at this piece in the studio for the last several days.  Called The Wending, it’s a painting on paper that’s about 17″ square.  I always get the sense of it being painted on fabric when I glimpse at it.  I don’t know why.  In the color there is a mix of saturation and of a feel of fading, as though the color is slightly worn from use.  Like an old t-shirt that was once sharply bright in its color and over the years, through sun and sweat and repeated washings, has become a softer shade of its original self. 

Comfortable in its place.

And that’s how this piece makes me feel.  There is the sense of the journey yet it doesn’t feel alien or strange.  There is an absence of trepidation about moving ahead, as though, like the words of Basho above, the journey itelf is home.

It’s an immediate and comfortable sensation in this painting and I think most of it derives from this softened color.  The darkness under the color is even softened and less foreboding which adds to the ease of this piece.  It feels like a good path, a good journey.

All I ask of it.