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Archive for November, 2017

Just a Little Klee

Posted in Favorite Things, Quote, tagged Kids, Paul Klee, Quote on November 9, 2017| 2 Comments »

I paint in order not to cry.

–Paul Klee

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I am getting stuff around to speak with a few classes of second graders this morning at a local school this morning. I had a wonderful experience speaking with third graders earlier in the year so I am looking forward to speaking with these kids. There is something energizing in the way they express themselves, appearing as it does without a whit of pretense. When they show interest or a sense of wonder, you know that it is the real thing.

And after a lifetime of dealing with adults where most interactions contain a lot of guarded words and expressions, it’s refreshing to deal with a group of kids who respond instantly and honestly.

I think at that age they have a desire to be heard. And that is something I understand and can relate to. I was somewhere around their age when I first had thoughts of being an artist and it came from my own desire to be heard and taken seriously.

We’ll probably talk about that. Should be fun.

At the top is a piece from one of my favorite artist, Paul Klee (1879-1940) along with a quote that I also understand from personal experience.

I don’t know that we’ll be talking about that this morning.

Have a good day.

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A Great Beast Stamping…

Posted in Current Events, Favorite Things, Quote, tagged Elections, Georges Lacombe, Les Nabis, Paul Gauguin, Virginia Woolf, Virigina on November 8, 2017| 6 Comments »

The waves broke and spread their waters swiftly over the shore. One after another they massed themselves and fell; the spray tossed itself back with the energy of their fall. The waves were steeped deep-blue save for a pattern of diamond-pointed light on their backs which rippled as the backs of great horses ripple with muscles as they move. The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.

― Virginia Woolf, The Waves

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I was planning on showing this painting, The Green Wave, at some point in the future. It’s from French painter Georges Lacombe (1868-1916) who was part of Les Nabis, a painting group heavily influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin. I am a big admirer of many of the painters, including Lacombe, associated with this group.

As I said, this was planned for sometime in the future but yesterday’s results in elections around the country prompted me to want to show it today. It was heartening, a big ray of light in the darkness, to have the people of Virginia show up in a big way and make a big statement against what has been happening this past year carrying the Dems to statewide victories. They rejected Ed Gillespie‘s attempt at copying 45*’s playbook of divisive rhetoric, giving Ralph Northam a landslide victory in the race for governor and won the majority of the down ballot races.

And it wasn’t just Virginia. Across the country Dems, Independents and disillusioned Republicans made very much the same statement– what is happening is not who we are. Longtime GOP seats were flipped in places that were thought to be bulletproof. If the members of the GOP in the house and senate don’t take notice and begin to act responsibly and in the best interest of the country and their true constituents– not the fat cat donors who line their pockets– they most likely will be swept away by this same wave when it comes around next year.

I can’t think of much, if anything, to say positively about the person who some call our president. But I do thank him for waking people up, for making so many more people take an active interest in what has been taking place while we all allowed ourselves to be distracted. They have been energized and yesterday’s victories demonstrates that real results can occur with focused resistance.

And that will only serve to strengthen the resolve of those who are going to make up the coming wave. This wave cracked the seawall. That was shown yesterday but a bigger wave is out there, restlessly waiting to unleash its full fury.

Like a great beast stamping.

A year ago on this day, that election left many of us thinking that this country was beyond saving, that we had succumbed to our lowest qualities. Hatred. Greed. Selfishness. Fear.

But people have come together to take action and to make their voices heard. So be encouraged this morning but do not relax, don’t think your responsibility has ended in one day or one small act. You snooze, you lose.

Instead, be even more involved. Double your efforts. Add your full force to the gathering wave and let everyone know what is coming.

Like a great beast stamping.

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Sensing the Unseen

Posted in Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged Antoine de Saint-Exupery, GC Myers, KADA Gallery, New Painting, Quote, The Little Prince on November 7, 2017| 1 Comment »

And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince
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This is a new painting, 18″ by 24″ on panel, that is the title piece for my upcoming show, Sensing the Unseen, at the Kada Gallery that opens December 1. I think it’s a fitting painting to share it’s name with the show.

I have long held the belief that art is about revelation, about making the invisible visible.

Creating the intangibles such as hope and wonder. Or awe or a sense of belonging or of self-empowerment or so many other feelings and emotions. Revealing these unseen intangibles is what art can and should do.

It’s a lofty and often evasive goal. The harder one tries specifically to do just that, to create these intangibles, the further one moves from that goal.

In my experience, it only happens when you can release yourself into the work, letting your mind focus on each element in each moment. Finding the rhythm and voice, one individual moment at a time. One stroke, one line, leads to the next and if you allow yourself to follow the guidance being given by what is in front of you, slowly the gap between the visible and the invisible closes, that gap suddenly filled with an emotion, a feeling that gives voice to the work.

This particular painting fits into that idea for me, filling me with the wonder I get from a full moon’s light on a snow covered landscape. The way the light is cast on the reflective snow creates a sense of something new in the familiar. The scene you’ve witnessed day after day takes on a different feel, filled with a paradoxical sense of mystery and revelation that comes from new shadows and new light.

You can almost sense the quiet as all sound is hushed and absorbed by the snow. It’s a quiet that reminds you of the stillness that you imagine your ancestors knew well in earlier times when there were fewer people and machines. And from that quiet a feeling of peacefulness and security arises to accompany that initial sense of wonder.

And suddenly the simple arrangement of paint and lines and shapes becomes something more. Complete and a thing unto itself. The intangible made tangible.

And that in itself becomes a wonder to me…

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A Continuing Mad World

Posted in Current Events, Music, Opinion, tagged Current Events, Gary Jules, Mad World, Mass Shootings, Tears For Fears on November 6, 2017| 12 Comments »

November 5, 26 dead so far in the Sutherland, Texas church shooting.

October 1, 58 dead in the Las Vegas shooting.

September 10, 9 killed in a Plano, Texas shooting. You probably don’t even remember that one.

And I’m not even mentioning the truck attack last week in NYC. Who knows what December will bring? I would like to believe that we won’t end the year with a bang but… well, you know.

I’m watching coverage of this latest shooting and I already feel that it is being pushed to the back of our collective consciousness. These events are normal now. They have their own pattern, their own rhythm and cycle that they follow, one that we have witnessed hundreds of times before.

So many times that the horror we feel is beginning to feel feigned, just thrown out there as an surface act of civility while in our minds we have already began the process of forgetting.

Unfortunately, even when we turn away, it’s hard to find evidence that we aren’t living in a mad world. And there is no solace in the empty words of our titular leaders, an administration that is treating this country like a company that it acquired in a hostile takeover. That’s where the new owners come in and liquidate any viable assets for themselves, leaving the company a broken shell.

You know, it’s going to be a year since the election in just a couple of days and I firmly believe that the actions of this administration have exceeded my fears. I thought they would be a little more discreet in their underhandedness but it seems like every day they reach a new level of audacity and corruption, both real and moral, that is breathtaking to behold.

And some of us still defend them. And this acceptance, this normalization, provides a perfect backdrop for our acts of violence against each other.

Just another day in this mad world.

I played this song six months ago in a different context but on the all too many days like this, I find it running on a loop in my mind. It’s Gary Jules’ version of the Tears For Fears song, Mad World. Interesting video. Have a good day and don’t let this mad world become your normal.

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Reign O’er Me

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Video, tagged Alfie Boe, Classic Quadrophenia, Early Work, The Who on November 5, 2017| 3 Comments »

Dragged out and looked over this older painting this morning. It’s from 1995 and is called Sky and Submission. It was a favorite when I did it and it still rings very true for me. The composition is sparse and it’s color is very delicate in nature– I had to adjust it a bit to make it show properly on the screen– but there is something powerful in it as a whole.

It reminds me of the feeling of looking out at the ocean. Maybe for us who live and were raised inland, away from the seas, seeking the far horizon in our landscapes is the equivalent. Watching the roll of the land and how it comes up to meet the sky raises many of those same feelings, creating a sense of awe in us of the great power and vastness of the world and our own smallness in relation to it.

Funny the things a small bit of paint on a piece of paper can make one think. Worse things to think on a Sunday morning, I suppose.

This piece reminded me for some reason of a song I played last year about this time, Reign O’er Me, from The Who’s Quadrophenia, which has been performed several times in the last month as the rock opera it was intended to be, with full orchestration. Last month it was at the Metropolitan Opera House in NYC.

I spent the better part of the last hour watching videos shot by audience members from this show with tenor Alfie Boe singing the lead. Even with a handheld smartphone’s recording limitations, they really show the power of the music and the performers. I am showing Reign O’er Me and a personal favorite 5:15 from that show back in October. Take a look and have yourself a good Sunday.

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Stranger in a Strange Land, Again

Posted in Early Paintings, Favorite Things, Music, Painting, Quote, tagged Dark Work, Early Work, Leon Russell, Moses, Quote, Robert Heinlein on November 4, 2017| 2 Comments »

And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

–Exodus 2:22

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I have been writing recently about some of the orphans, those paintings that make the rounds of the galleries and finally come back to me. The piece above is one of these orphans but it really isn’t. It’s mine alone, one of the rare pieces that I don’t think I would ever give up. Like many parents when looking at their children, I see much of myself in this painting.

Over the years I have periodically written about a group of paintings that were considered my Dark Work that were painted in the year or so after 9/11. The piece shown above is one of these paintings. I very seldom consider a painting being for myself only but this one has always felt, from the very minute it was completed, as though it should stay with me.

It is titled Stranger (In a Strange Land) which is derived from the title of Robert Heinlein’s famous sci-fi novel which in turn was derived from the words of Moses in Exodus 2:22, shown here at the top. The name Gershom is derived from the Hebrew words ger sham and means a stranger there. It is defined now as either exile or sojourner.

The landscape in this piece has an eerie, alien feel to it under that ominous sky. When I look at it I am instantly reminded of the feeling of that sense of not belonging that I have often felt throughout my life, as though I was that stranger in that strange land. The rolling field rows in the foreground remind me just a bit of the Levite cloth that adorned Moses when he was discovered in the Nile as an infant, a symbol of origin and heritage that acts as a comforting element here, almost like a swaddling blanket for the stranger as he views the landscape before him.

As I said, it is one of those rare pieces that I feel is for me alone, that has only personal meaning, even though I am sure there are others who will recognize that same feeling in this. For me this painting symbolizes so much that feeling of alienation that I have experienced for much of my life, that same feeling from which my other more optimistic and hopeful work sprung as a reaction to it. Perhaps this is where I found myself and the more hopeful work was where I aspired to be.

Anyway, that’s enough for my five-cent psychology lesson for today. In short, this is a piece that I see as elemental to who I am and where I am going. This one stays put .

Here’s a little of the great (and I think underappreciated) Leon Russell from way back in 1971 singing, appropriately, Stranger in a Stranger Land…

This is a repost of an entry from back in 2013 that has been heavily edited.

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Dia de Muertos

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged Day of the Dead, Dia de Muertos, Guess Who, Johnny Kidd and the Pirates, Music, The Who, Video on November 2, 2017| 2 Comments »

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”

— George Eliot

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November 2 is Dia de Muertos, the Day of the Dead, in Mexico. Actually, it’s a multi-day holiday that spans from October 31 to November 2. It’s a holiday that has ancient roots dating back some 3000 years and was originally celebrated earlier in the year until the Spaniards conquered Mexico in the 16th century. They moved the date to fall in line with the Christian Allhallowtide.

Most of see the imagery that is associated with the Day of the Dead, such as the painted skulls like the one at the top, and automatically equate it with our Halloween. Spooky and scary. But it is a much more benign and pleasant holiday, a celebration of the memory and spirit of our deceased relatives, a day to travel to cemeteries to eat and drink at their graves. The ancient belief was that that on that day each year the spirits would come back to visit their worldly ancestors.

Being a person who loves to stroll through cemeteries among the stones and monuments, it’s my kind of holiday, more so than our Halloween. I find the calm and quiet of cemeteries to be comforting and not spooky at all.

The names and words written about them on their stones give each the feel of a voice waiting to be engaged and I am often more than willing to stop to speak their name, especially the older stones where it is obvious that they are no longer visited by family members, if any remain at all. I get a feeling that simply speaking their name aloud once more brings them back to life in some small way, like a faint trace of mist appearing in the vast sky of our collected memory.

That may seem crazy but that doesn’t matter. Nobody gets hurt and it creates a little peace for myself. And I think that’s what the Day of the Dead is about.

That being said, here’s a video that might seem a little more Halloween than Dia de Muertos. But it is a song about love and attraction and that makes it more about this day. It’s Shakin’ All Over. I was going to play the original by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates or the great live version from The Who but settled on this version from The Guess Who, mainly because of it’s cartoon video with dancing skeletons. Feels like a fitting song for Dia de Muertos.

Enjoy yours and remember the dead.

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Braque and That Which Cannot be Explained

Posted in Favorite Things, Influences, Quote, tagged Cubism, Elvira Madigan, Gorges Braque, Influence, Mozart, Pablo Picasso, Quote, Video on November 1, 2017| Leave a Comment »

“There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.”

— Georges Braque

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This is a quote from artist Georges Braque that I used on the first artist statement I ever wrote many years back. It still pops up in my mind on a regular basis, especially at times when I find myself looking at a just finished painting, wondering what is there that is triggering my emotional response to it. These words from Braque reminds me that what I am trying to capture is not the subject matter, not a mere representation of reality. I am trying to capture an indefinable feeling or spirit that is not calculable or even visible.

Definitely beyond the reach of my words.

It is the sum of color and light.

And texture and line.

And the spaces in between.

It is of the spirit and the life force. When it is there, it is obvious and undeniable. And though I can’t explain it, I can see the purpose and value of that work.

And that is a good day…

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I have never really focused here on the work of George Braque (1882-1963) who is mainly known as one of the major artists, along with Picasso, of the Cubist movement. His work, through all the differing phases of his long career, is always impressive. I thought I’d share the video slideshow below of his work. It’s set to Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21, better known as the Elvira Madigan concerto, which makes it a most pleasant and calming thing to spend a few minutes with on the first cool morning of November.