The painting shown here on the right is a24″ by 36″ on canvas and is part of my solo exhibit which opens Friday at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria. It’s title is Find Your Way which fits neatly in with the show’s title, Traveler. As concepts, both this painting and this show have to do with moving forward and discovering new territories within, becoming more than you were when the journey began. Continuous seeking, sometimes plodding along, all to find that internal sense of comfort and belonging that some might refer to as home. That place where your external reality one day matches your internal reality.
I’m not sure that was my goal when I began painting just a little over twenty years ago. I knew that I needed to travel from that place inside where I had been dwelling and color and form became a vehicle for me, one that would carry me emotionally to new horizons and vistas, closer to that place where I might feel comfortably at home, inside and out.
And it has.
I am closer to home but it’s a journey that will most likely not end until my final day. And that’s okay because I have come to appreciate the lessons of the trek and the sight of the new horizon coming into view, knowing that I am further along than I was it all began.
A big part of my journey has been my affiliation with a few galleries, all with which I have had long relationships, who have allowed me to continually keep searching for that place that I don’t even know. I began with the Principle Gallery in early 1997 and had my first solo show there in 2000. It is where the Red Tree was born and this year marks fifteen years that they have allowed me to chronicle my internal travels in a show there each year. It has been my great pleasure to have stumbled into such a wonderful place with such warm and real people, a place that makes me feel closer to home during this journey.
There’s a full preview of the show below that I quickly put together. I hope it gives you that sense of the continuity of effort and purpose from image to image that I see.
Redtree Times 