While going through the group of older work that I have here in the studio last week I came across this painting from back in 2000 called The Elusive Path. It’s one of a small handful of pieces from that time that are still in my possession which means, since my pre-2000 documentation was pretty spotty, that it is one of the few pieces from that period that I can closely examine. Oh, there are a few others but they are pretty much misses, paintings that are lacking in some way. Some are just too worked over– I was trying to make something out of nothing and didn’t have the tools yet to do so– and some are just blah.
But then I pulled out this painting, one that I hadn’t really looked at with intent for years. This was probably due to a bile green frame that put a taint on the whole thing, making me want to not look for too long in its direction. I looked at it for a moment then decided I needed to unframe it before casting any judgements on it. I just couldn’t get past that frame’s influence over the whole. So I did and was truly pleased with what emerged.
Without the hulking presence of that green frame, this piece felt new again, as though it had a grasp of where I was wanting the work to go at that point and was moving in that direction. Oh, there have been changes, evolutions of elements and color-handling but the forms and lines are in the continuum. Plus it held one of the earliest incarnations of the Red Tree which had more or less premiered at my first solo show, fittingly titled RedTree, at the Principle Gallery in 2000.
I’m sitting here this morning looking at this piece now and it seems so different than the painting I had thought of for all these years as simply being the unfortunate picture trapped in a horrible frame. It feels alive and new now and I feel a sense of pride in it that I never expected. I’m looking at it next to a new painting in progress and even though the new one is being painted in a different process with some elements that were not in my vocabulary back in 2000, there is no denying the line that runs from one to the other.
They are one and the same in being true expressions of what I am or desire to be.
And maybe that is the lesson here. We might be obscured by our trappings, as this painting was by that frame, but if we remain patient and true to what we believe to be our best self we will eventually find a way forward, find our way to our desired destination. We can find that elusive path.
Redtree Times 