For thus hath the Lord said unto me, Go, set a watchman, let him declare what he seeth.
—Isaiah 21:6
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The biblical verse above is of course the one which was the basis for the title for Harper Lee‘s sequel, to her classic To Kill A Mockingbird. In the books, Scout regarded her father, Atticus Finch, as such a watchman, a moral and righteous sentinel looking out for injustice and evil.
And that is kind of how I see the central figure of this new painting, the lone Red Tree set high on rocky outcropping in what seems to be an endless sea. Maybe it is the red of the sky that sets such a tone. I don’t know.
I’ve been fascinated by small islands in my work lately. The isolation of them gives these pieces a brooding quality and reminds me a bit of working as an artist. I’ve often felt that the job of an artist is to act as a sort of watchman.
It is very much a job of isolation, one that is often formed in the solitariness of youth when one always felt like an outsider, observing the world quietly and mostly unseen from the edges of life. The work itself is done and grows in isolation but is very much influenced by one’s observations of the world around them. And much of the work, if it reaches the level of art, is based on a sensitivity to what that artist has observed and felt.
And maybe that is the real purpose of artists, to act as a watcher, looking to warn us of our own straying from reason and to keep our humanity intact. Maybe that is what I see in this painting.
This painting is 8″ by 24″ on canvas and is titled, of course, Watchman. It is coming with me to the Principle Gallery this Saturday, September 17, when I give my Gallery Talk there beginning at 1 PM. There will be a group of new paintings including this piece as well as a group of selected pieces from my studio that will only be available for that day. And there is, of course, the drawing at the end of the talk for the painting, Defiant Heart.
Should be a good time and I hope you can make it to the Principle Gallery this Saturday!
This coming Saturday, September 17, is my annual Gallery Talk at the Principle Gallery in Old Town Alexandria, VA. This is my 14th Gallery Talk at the Principle and it’s been a lot of fun through the years. There’s generally a lot of give and take between the audience and myself in the form of questions and comments and something new and unexpected often comes to light. I almost always find myself saying something I didn’t expect to say or learning something new about my own work from the comments from someone at the talk.
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
I’m sitting in my studio looking at an empty canvas. Not too long ago it was not empty. No, I spent the better part of the afternoon yesterday working on this canvas, a 36″ square that was prepped beforehand with gesso and a first layer of black paint. Several hours spent and not a minute of it felt smooth or in rhythm. The paint didn’t come off the brush in the way that I expected or desired. The composition seemed to just go nowhere ,leaving bland and lifeless bits of nothing littered all over the canvas. I never felt a flow, which is that quality I have described before where one mark leads to the next as though you are reading the lines and strokes on the canvas like they were revelatory tea leaves.
“Just remember that the things you put into your head are there forever, he said. You might want to think about that.
Imagine your child (or your nephew or grandchild) at age 12. Imagine them spending 10 or 12 or even 14 hours a day, six days a week in one of the breaker rooms of a coal mine like the one shown here on the right. Hunched over in the gritty dust of the coal, they picked the coal for differing sizes and to sort out impurities. Imagine the men who are shown in the photo with sticks poking your child, perhaps kicking him to speed him up. Imagine all of this for seven and a half cents per hour.
I have a square cardboard box in one of the rooms of my studio. It’s not much to look at it and it certainly doesn’t have any significance attached to its exterior appearance. But for me it’s a treasure chest, my secret bounty. You see, this rather plain box holds hundreds of small pieces from my earliest forays in paint from twenty some years ago.
August has been vanquished, mercifully.
Redtree Times 