This coming Saturday, August 1, I will be giving a Gallery Talk at the West End Gallery in support of my current show, Home+Land, that is hanging there. It starts at 1 PM and, as many of you who regularly read this blog will know, ends with a drawing where one person in attendance will take home a painting of mine.
It’s something I’ve done for several years now at my Gallery Talks and is something that really gives me great pleasure. I’ve always felt so fortunate to have found my current life as a painter that this allows me to express my gratitude in a tangible way. As a result, I try to carefully choose the works that I give away, not wanting to just go the far corner of the closet where I hide those early experiments that make me grimace to look at them now.
No, I want to give away paintings where I feel a pang of loss in giving them away, want them to have some sort of meaning for me so that this is not just an empty gesture. So, for this Saturday’s drawing, I have chosen the painting shown above. It’s called Destiny Bound and is a 16″ by 20″ canvas so it has the size to give it a real presence. It’s a painting that was only shown publicly once for a very short time before I brought it back to the studio. It is sort of an anomaly in my body of work in the way it is framed, using a gold-leafed plein air frame rather than my signature frame. I tried this frame style for a handful of pieces several years ago and decided that I wanted to stay solely with the continuity of my normal frames. This is the one painting that remains in a gold frame and I chose to keep it as I’ve just become used to seeing it that way.
So, even though it has a unique overall appearance for my work, the painting itself is what I consider a great example of what has been called my Dark Work, work that first appeared in the months after 9/11 but has evolved over the years. I am really attracted to overall presence of this painting and the deep colors and line work as well. And the expressiveness of the tree on the right. That tree has always felt like it pays tribute in some way to Thomas Hart Benton with its curves and lines. While it reminds me of some his figures or trees, off the top of my head I can’t cite a particular painting of his that might feature such a tree or figure.
But that connection and the way the tree seems animated jumps out at me whenever I look at this piece. I just plain like this painting. And I am giving it away on Saturday. So, stop in at the West End Gallery on Saturday for what I hope will be an entertaining talk and maybe you can take Destiny Bound home with you. The talk starts at 1 PM and generally lasts about an hour. Hope to see you there.
Redtree Times 