This new piece, a 16″ by 16″ image on paper, has been a long time in the making. I started it when we got back from California at the beginning of December and have went at it in dribs and drabs over the last several weeks, finally putting on what I feel are the last touches yesterday. It’s an odd piece for me, darker in theme and feel, but one that makes me want to continue looking at it.
The idea came from the trip, from someone I met at the Just Looking Gallery. He has some of my work and told me that he had an idea for what he thought would make an interesting painting for me. I usually don’t get much inner response to those type of solicitations but I immediately had an image in mind as he described a simple clearing where a path comes to an end. It was an intriguing concept that was a new variation on the path that often winds through my paintings .
Does that path ever come to an end? What if it did end? How would that place look and feel? All of these thoughts ran through my mind in a flash. It was such an existential question with great symbolic potential. The idea and the image ran through my mind for the rest of the trip.
This is the first incarnation of that thought. I used the Red Chair as the central character here. I felt that there needed to be a character of some sort in this space and didn’t want it to be a figure. The chair also creates a new set of questions. Why was it there? Who put it there and who sits in it? As the path in this piece comes to its conclusion , the wider clearing at its end gives it the appearance of an old keyhole. Perhaps this is a symbol for the unlocking of some barrier behind which lay the answers to our greatest questions or to some grand mystery?
It’s a piece that keeps asking questions and I don’t know if it will ever yield answers. But it makes me want to keep looking. and perhaps that is its purpose here.
I don’t know– it’s a mystery to me as well.
Redtree Times 
I’m so intriugued by the painting. It doesn’t seem at all dark or mysterious – “compelling” is the word that comes to mind. I saw the keyhole immediately, even while looking at the image in the notification email.
Old-fashioned keyholes, the kind I grew up with, were wonderful things. You could actually look through them into rooms and see a good bit of what was happening. I can remember an instance of two of keyhole-peeking in my childhood. Here, the chair feels like an invitation to look through this keyhole, to see what’s illuminated by the light that seems to emanate from the heart of the earth.
I think if you grew up around old houses with keyholes, there is a symbolic resonance in that shape. I know that I’m always intrigued by the idea of a keyhole, the idea of taking a small peek into the world on the other side of that door.
I couldn’t help but think of Clint Eastwood.
Thankfully, I don’t think of him at all when I’m painting.
I love this entry, Gary. Beautiful painting too! It’s intriguing…
Jesse Gardner Assistant Director
West End Gallery 12 West Market St. Corning, NY 14830 (607) 936-2011 Website: http://www.westendgallery.net Blog: http://www.westendtalk.wordpress.com
Thank you for supporting the arts!
Thanks, Jesse!
Wow! Beautiful and, I agree, extremely compelling. When I look at your painting I hear an invitation to come sit in this chair, be still, and enter into the Light while the trees witness and guard my journey.
I’m glad that you feel a warmth in this piece. I was afraid it might have an eerie feel that might turn off some, even though I don’t get that feeling from it myself.
And what if your red tree was in the center of the clearing?
I thought about having the Red Tree in the clearing but it just wasn’t right. The tree is always in the present tense while the chair’s potential for different tenses (someone is sitting on it, someone sat on it, someone will sit on it) makes it more open to wider interpretations. And I thought there should be an open ended feel to the meaning here.