Redtree Times

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.
–Plato

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I have painted a couple of paintings this past year that have featured an observatory propped upon a hill.   I like the idea that this building has a shape and a location that instantly defines it, making it almost symbolic of the desire to transcend this world that it contains.  This desire to transcend, to know more, is built within us and we  seek these existential answers in many ways, sometimes in the stars and sometimes in the spiritual.  Others seek these answers in other worldly ways, either through love , pleasure or labor, among many other things.

These different ways of searching  are what I think is the central theme of this new new painting, The Upward Gaze, a 20″by 24″ canvas that is part of my November show, Alchemy, at the Kada Gallery.  The observatory is there resting high above the other buildings as it looks for the celestial answer: where have we come from?  Then there is the a church with a steeple that is pointing upward seeking an response from above to its question: where are we going?  On the lower left there is a barn among the fields which for me symbolizes the question: what is our purpose here?  The Red Roofs of all of the buildings here act as indicators, each pointing upward.

The road heads outward from this group of building, moving  toward and disappearing before  the horizon, over which an all-knowing  sun/moon hovers among a mosaic sky.  The soft,broken colors of the sky feel like light particles to me, the energy that propels this whole thing.

It’s a seemingly simple painting but I think there is much more to it…