Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for October, 2017

In My Life

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , on October 8, 2017| Leave a Comment »

There are sensory perceptions that we carry throughout our lives.  It might be a sound, a smell, an image that once brought to mind brings forth the atmosphere and feeling of the time in which they first entered our consciousness.

The smell of a cooking turkey instantly returns me to my childhood and the farmhouse where we lived. It would be Thanksgiving and  I can see Mom’s old formal dining table with the heavy chairs that surrounded it. It’s a long table with all the extending leafs in place and it’s surface is covered with the bounty of Thanksgiving, the mashed potatoes, canned cranberry sauce, stuffing and so on. Just the tiniest whiff of a roasting turkey always — and I mean always–sends me hurtling through time back to that table.

The same is true with certain songs. Take for instance, the song In My Life from the Beatles. Hearing those opening chords always sends me back to same big old farmhouse that played such a big part in my formative years. I can see the old floral wallpaper in the living room and there’s a big console record player with cloth covered speakers on its front and two sliding panels on top that uncover a turntable on one side and the controls for a radio on the other. Those opening chords have me immediately standing in front of that record player with the light from the large windows in that room filtering through Mom’s frilled white cotton curtains. On the wall there was a reproduction of a schlocky painting — I think it was a red covered bridge–printed on thick cardboard that was bought at the Loblaws grocery store.

It’s a good memory. I felt safe in that place, free to imagine places and adventures I hoped for in the future. It was a good place to foster some of the thoughts and observations that direct my paintings to this very day.

That’s my intro for this week’s Sunday morning music. I thought instead of playing the original Beatles version of In My Life which is understandably a favorite of mine, I would opt instead for one from Bette Midler with a beautiful accompaniment on ukelele from uke wizard Jake Shimabukuro. The feeling of his playing on this song works for me as much as the original in bringing back that earlier time and place.

Give a listen, think about some of those sensations that trigger your own memories and have a good Sunday.

 

Read Full Post »

Looking Back

Posted in Biographical, Early Paintings, Motivation, tagged , , on October 7, 2017| 5 Comments »

I was going through my little treasure chest the other day. It’s an old square cardboard box filled with old experiments, failures, breakthroughs and other assorted oddities from my earliest days painting. I enjoy doing this because many of the pieces stimulate some of the same sensory triggers that drove me back when they were painted, back in 1994 and early 1995. Feeling that same sensation now creates an urgency in me, one that makes me want to get back to work so that maybe I can create that same feeling in this moment.

Motivation comes in many forms. It even rises from work that I felt was not good enough to show years ago. Over the years many of these pieces have grown in my estimation and I see now how they fit into my larger body of work and how they made the transformation from borderline fire-starters to things that I value highly today.

While I do see motivation in this sometime visitation to the past, part of me wonders if there is any value in going back and experiencing these pieces once again. After all, I have moved on since that time and can’t return to the point that produced that work. The nostalgia of it makes me forget the frustration that was present at the time that came from knowing that these pieces weren’t hitting the spot I envisioned, that there was much progress to be made in my work before it would satisfy me on a consistent basis.

So maybe going back serves little purpose. Maybe it prevents one from moving on to new paths, new ideas, new work. As aviator/author Beryl Markham wrote in her memoir, West With the Night:

“I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way, leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones, vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.” 

She may be right. But this morning I am looking back to a place I don’t want to return to in the present moment. I know I have to move forward, have to progress. These works now belong to a past that cannot hold me back from that formidable future ahead.

And they won’t. If anything, they make me want to be better…

 

 

Read Full Post »

You Don’t Know How It Feels

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, tagged , , , , on October 5, 2017| 6 Comments »

Don’t have much to say this morning and I’m fumbling around the internet looking for something that sparks my imagination. I did come across the painting above from F.H. Varley (1881-1969) who was part of the famed Canadian Group of Seven painters, a highly influential gathering of landscape painters in the 1920’s and 30’s.

This piece is called Untitled (Mist and Sunset) and is from around 1930. It’s a bit looser than most of Varley’s other work, which I will highlight here at some point, but the expressiveness of it really spoke to me. Something very right about this piece, at least for me. Those bits of light in the center, which might be ( or not be) sunlight on the caps of waves, give the piece an ethereal feel that gives me pause this morning.

It reminds me that I wanted to mention the passing of Tom Petty the other day which was somewhat overlooked on another bad and black news day. I had been following and listening to Petty since the 70’s with Breakdown still being a personal favorite. Some of his songs have become part of the soundtrack of my life and hearing them sparks personal memories and times long past. He was always rock solid and it seemed like everything he released never let you down.

It all felt honest and part of who he was as an artist and a person. All you can ask…

Here’s his You Don’t Know How It Feels. I guess that is the basis for all art — making people know how you feel– from his music to the Varley painting above.

Good travels to you, Tom…

 

Read Full Post »

Jacob Lawrence’s Humanity

Posted in Favorite Things, tagged , , , on October 4, 2017| Leave a Comment »

American Jacob Lawrence was a great painter who worked as a Social Realist, capturing the experience of the African-American community in the 20th century in a number of different series of paintings and prints featuring his strong colors and often abstract forms.  His work is powerful and engaging across the board, giving the his work a universal appeal that culture and place. I seldom see anything from Lawrence, even among those pieces that don’t move me as much as others, that doesn’t have purpose and something to say.

It is work of humanity.

It’s work that comes across as instantly identifiable as his whenever I see it. His forms and colors and compositions create a unique and individual voice that speaks clearly to the viewer, easily transmitting feeling and emotion from the image to the eye and mind of the viewer. I believe that’s a quality every artist craves and Lawrence has loads of it.

Lawrence was born in Atlantic City in 1917 and lived in New York City from his teens until around 1970 when he moved to Seattle area, where he was a professor of art at the University of Washington for many years after. He died in 2000. His wife, Gwendolyn Knight, was also an artist.

If you’re not familiar with Lawrence’s work, I urge you to look into it a bit more. For now, here’s some of his work below along with a nice video of his work set to Blue Train from jazz great John Coltrane. Enjoy…

 

Read Full Post »

Again ( and Again and Again)

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , on October 3, 2017| 2 Comments »

Let me apologize to those of you who come here for a little break from the outer world, to see some art and hear some music. I know that is why I write this blog, to help myself better formulate and share a world that seems far removed from the worries and horrors of reality. But I am not immune to the intrusions of the world and because these events affect me, they affect my work. So I feel compelled to comment, to vent, to bellow…

I don’t want to write anything about the mass shooting that took place in Las Vegas. Like the shooting itself,  it seems senseless. Why not just rerun one of the many other posts I have written in the aftermath of other mass shootings that have taken place in America?

It’s the same old crap.

There are lawmakers who send out thoughts and prayers to the victims and families. Yeah, a lot of good those thoughts and prayers have done in the past. But I guess they’re easier to produce than the resolve and action required to do something that might prevent the need for future thoughts and prayers.

Then there are the politicians and talking heads on the cable news channels who will say that this is not the time to talk about gun control, to address the problem. Where did that defense come from? I might be wrong here but it seems to me that this might be the very best time to discuss a problem, before fatigue and memory fades. And we do get tired from seeing these things and our recollection of these events do fade.  But let’s not talk about it now. We are governed by lawmakers who are much more loyal and dedicated to their donors rather than their constituents and the country as whole. Statesmanship and compromise are seemingly something from a past era.

As is normal in these events, the NRA and the lawmakers who help themselves to their ample funds will suddenly be nowhere to be seen for awhile. Crickets…

Then, of course, gun company stocks shoot ever higher because of the fear that this time there might be real change in gun control. So investors know that the American public will rush to gun dealers and grab even more guns in the hysterical belief that more guns will somehow protect them. Fear is a great sales tool and yesterday was a very good day for gun companies on the stock market and in the gun shops.

Then there are those who will come out and say this is an act that goes against everything this country stands for. Yesterday, I heard an interview with a popular country music duo and in it they said that this was an attack on America. All I could think  is that this is America now, this is who we are, this is the face we send out to the world. We come across as gun crazy, easily swayed and distracted, afraid, and prone to reactionary violence.

This is America.

And usually there are those twits who will say that if there had been more guns the event could have been lessened somehow, like they would suddenly become some movie action hero who would stand, impervious to a hail of bullets, and calmly plunk the shooter with a single shot. Well, this event is the ultimate disclaimer to that stupidity. Even if every cowboy in the crowd had been packing two guns on their hips and one in their boot, they would have been equally helpless against this onslaught. Unless there were sniper rifles on the ground  ready to go into action, any sidearm would be useless from a shooter located a 1/3 of a mile away and above them.

The new element here is Bill O’Reilly saying yesterday that these shootings are simply the “price of freedom.” That’s a new one on me. I tend to think of them as being the price for stupidity, irresponsibility and delusion.

Maybe that is freedom for O’Reilly. And maybe in America now, that has become the definition of freedom.

I don’t want to believe that.

But until I see some evidence to the contrary, I am beginning to think it’s true.

Tomorrow, back to regularly scheduled programming. I promise.

Read Full Post »

Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore

Posted in Current Events, Music, tagged , , , on October 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »

In the studio I have a big box that is overflowing with small flags that we have picked up at the local cemetery where we often walk. There are probably 300 to 400 of them jammed in this box.

Most are faded, dirty and ripped. Some have just come detached from their dowel from the wind and the rain. And some are shredded by the mowing crews who won’t take a moment to get off their machines to pick them up before running over them. I am sure these same guys are probably having a fit that some NFL players are silently protesting by taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem.

I have been thinking over the years about incorporating them into a project but it hasn’t taken shape yet. But we continue to pick them up, often replacing them with new flags. I can’t fully explain why.

I don’t blindly worship the flag, don’t consider myself any more patriotic than the next person. I certainly don’t believe that we are in any way perfect as a nation.

Far from it. We are by definition a work in progress– so long as there is progress to made we are not done evolving as a nation.

There’s just something about seeing it being treated so badly that irks me a bit. But I don’t feel that same way at all when I see NFL players silently protesting in a dignified and respectful manner. In fact, their protests to me align perfectly with the symbol of the flag as I see it.

People have somehow come to believe, in the politicization of it, that it solely represents the troops and first responders. Well, while it does represent them it also flies as symbol for every citizen and their equal status in this nation.  Every single citizen is represented in those stars and bars. City folk, country folk, black, white, hispanic, Asian, etc– it doesn’t matter so far as that symbol is concerned. It represents us all under the defining concept of this country that we all are granted the same rights and opportunities and bear the same responsibilities.

It is not just a flag that reminds us of our past. It is our symbol of an aspiration to be ever better, to move far beyond the flaws of the past. That flag is a symbol that wants us to stand against injustices, to protest wrongs, to help the oppressed and to move us closer to what we hope is a perfect state of being.

It is in many ways a flag of protest. Almost all of the progress that has been made in this country– abolishment of slavery, workers rights, universal suffrage, civil rights and so many other things we take for granted on a day to day basis– came about as a result of citizens standing in protest to what they saw as a wrong. In fact, protest had a hand in saving the lives of troops by forcing the government to end the conflict in Viet Nam.

So, if the players’ protests bother you, ask yourself why you are so offended. Ask yourself what you have done to make this country a better place. Have you helped another American in in distress lately?

There are 3 and a half million American citizens living in Puerto Rico who are fighting for their survival and you are worried that these players in their silent protest are somehow ruining America?

Get over it.

If you love the flag and the country so much, make it better.  Recognize those things that wrong us all or help somebody. There are more US citizens in Puerto Rico than the the combined populations of Wyoming, Montana and North and South Dakota. Imagine if every citizen in those four states was on the edge of losing everything they held dear, including their lives.  Wouldn’t you want to reach out to them? Wouldn’t you want to give them the same kind of help you would want if such a thing ever came your way?

If you do think there is a difference helping those states than in extending all the assistance we can muster to Puerto Rico, you are most likely bothered by the NFL protests. In which case, maybe you should look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge what kind of person you really are.

You might wave the flag, you might even worship the goddamn thing, but you are no patriot.

I have said my piece so let’s move on to this week’s Sunday morning music, one that is made to order for this blog entry. It’s John Prine’s classic protest song about flag wavers and their empty patriotism, Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore. It feels as relevant today as it did in 1972.

So have a good day and wrap yourself in the flag while you think about helping the American people of Puerto Rico in some way. It’s the American thing to do…

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts