I wasn’t going to show this. Part of being an artist is in creating and maintaining a certain facade, playing up the more favorable facets of one’s personal prism. To show something that might be perceived as contrary to this nurtured persona is always a risk, at least in an intellectual sense. People don’t always want to know anything beyond the single dimension they might know and to offer more than that imperils their regard for even that single dimension.
For instance, several years back I did a series of dark figures that I called the Outlaw series. Whem they were hung at my annual show, the gallery asked for a separate statement to explain these figures out of the fear that my collectors would think that this was the new direction that my work had headed, instead of it merely being another view of those same emotions that had created the more calm and placid work that they recognized and were drawn to. I did, in fact, have several folks ask if this was the new direction and some even asked me to promise that it was not. I tried to explain that this was not new but merely a different part of the same person. Another facet on the prism.
I’m not sure they were convinced.
It was painted yesterday in about ten minutes, without much thought or care. It’s about 16″ by 20″ and painted with one large brush. Over the years I have periodically dashed off these characters, calling them my angry pictures. I am not necessarily angry when I paint these figures. Perhaps frustrated or anxious. I don’t really know.
I have had these guys in me since I was child and periodically they emerge. I don’t know if they serve a purpose or what part of myself, if any, they represent. I always feel a bit of release after they are on the surface and perhaps that is the purpose. They usually go into a sort of file and aren’t often seen after that. Occasionally, I will pull them out and be slightly baffled by them and very seldom do I show them to anyone.
But I felt that I would show a bit more of the prism today. They don’t change the visble light coming from the other facets. It comes from the same source but out in a different manner.
At least, I think so.
Redtree Times 
My first thought was, “I’ve seen that fellow.” The last time I saw him, he was peering at me from behind a curtain in a double-wide on a deserted Mississippi levee, and I decided it was time to move on down the road.
My second thought was, “Ten minutes? Good gosh.”
Now I’ve pondered, and have two more observations. I have a little sense of that “periodically they emerge” business. I’ve written maybe a half-dozen poems in the past three years. Two have been published in a “real” book. I have another that’s been in draft form in my files for a year – but it won’t be finished until it says it’s time to be finished. Maybe never.
I can “write an essay”, but the poems just “emerge”. It’s the weirdest thing in the world. If I think to myself, “Ok, now I’m going to sit down and write a poem”, I’ll just frustrate myself to death. I have to wait for them.
As for the Outlaw series, the response of others and what it means for an artist to suddenly be “different” – all I could think of is what Rick Nelson went through when his own development moved him beyond teen idol. Remember “Garden Party”?
Rick Nelson is a pretty good example, especially of an artist wanting to expand beyond the expectations and perceptions of his audience. You see that a lot in pop music. I often wonder if that is the difference between musicians who stay at one point in their development, playing the same song the same way forever, like those bands who end up on Golden Oldies tours, and between musicians who continue to grow and challenge their listeners. Dylan is a prime example here. Do those Golden Oldies musicians just not have the bravery to risk alienating their fans and settle in a comfortable niche?
The scenario with the curtain and the double-wide is very interesting…