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Archive for June, 2020

Build a House

Posted in Uncategorized on June 20, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“The Quarantine House” – Now at the Principle Gallery

 

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Thought I’d just play a song from one of my most favorite artists, the super talented Rhiannon Giddens.  It marks Juneteenth, which was yesterday, and was written in the last week or so. She collaborates on it with the great Yo-Yo Man– from a distance, of course. The song premiered on YouTube yesterday. Enjoy and have a good day.

This is what Rhiannon had to say about the song: “This song came knocking about a week ago and I had to open the door and let it in. What can I say about what’s been happening, what has happened, and what is continuing to happen, in this country, in the world? There’s too many words and none, all at once. So I let the music speak, as usual. What a thing to mark this 155th anniversary of Juneteenth with that beautiful soul Yo-Yo Ma. Honored to have it out in the world.”

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Build a House

You brought me here to build your house, build your house, build your house
You brought me here to build your house and grow your garden fine

I laid the brick and built your house, built your house, built your house
I laid the brick and built your house, raised the plants so high

And when you had the house and land, the house and land, the house and land
And when you had the house and land, then you told me “go.”

I found a place to build my house, build my house, build my house
I found a place to build my house since I couldn’t go back home

You said I couldn’t build a house, build a house, build a house
You said I couldn’t build a house, so you burned it down

So then I traveled far and wide, far and wide, far and wide
And then I traveled far and wide until I found a home

I learned your words and wrote a song, wrote a song, wrote a song
I learned your words and wrote a song to put my story down

But then you came and took my song, took my song, took my song
But then you came and took my song, playing it for your own

I took my bucket, lowered it down, lowered it down, lowered it down
I took my bucket, lowered it down, the well will never run dry.

You brought me here to build a house, build a house, build a house
You brought me here to build a house. I will not be moved.

No, I will not be moved. No, I will not be, I will not be, I will not be moved.

—Rhiannon Giddens

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Duty and Joy

Posted in Biographical, Motivation, Poetry, tagged , , , , , , , on June 19, 2020| 4 Comments »

“Hunkered Down”- Now at the Principle Gallery

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I slept and dreamt
that life was joy.
I awoke and saw
that life was duty.
I worked — and behold,
duty was joy.

–Rabindranath Tagore

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When I first read the short poem above from the great poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore some time ago, it struck a chord with me. It so simply, in just a few lines, put across an observation that takes most of us a lifetime to realize. That is, if we ever do realize it.

Duty was joy.

But what is duty? Is it in being a good parent? A faithful spouse and a loyal friend? Is it in what we do to make a living? Or is it in being decent and caring human being?

Perhaps, it is how our lives touch the lives of others? Could that be a duty?

I don’t know for sure. Most likely joy is not a one size fits all proposition.

My own feeling is that duty is much like having a purpose, a reason for living. I remember reading Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl‘s transcendent book, Man’s Search For Meaning, which described his time in the Auschwitz death camp. He observed that those who were able to survive the horror were those who somehow had a purpose for their life, who saw a future that they needed to reach ahead for. This purpose, even a modest one, often gave them the drive needed for survival, creating a path forward for them.

In the year after being liberated from Auschwitz, Frankl gave a series of lectures that were the basis for his book. In one he spoke of Tagore’s poem and that final line: Duty was joy:

So, life is somehow duty, a single, huge obligation. And there is certainly joy in life too, but it cannot be pursued, cannot be “willed into being” as joy; rather, it must arise spontaneously, and in fact, it does arise spontaneously, just as an outcome may arise: Happiness should not, must not, and can never be a goal, but only an outcome; the outcome of the fulfillment of that which in Tagore’s poem is called duty… All human striving for happiness, in this sense, is doomed to failure as luck can only fall into one’s lap but can never be hunted down.

In short, lasting joy and happiness cannot be pursued as a goal on their own, without a responsibility to some higher purpose.

I am writing this because sometimes I need to be reminded of this. I have been struggling at times recently in the studio, seemingly fighting with myself to find something that just doesn’t seem to be there. The harder I tried to find it, the further away it seemed. It was like I was looking for something to quell my anxieties and bring me some form of easy happiness. To bring me effortless joy.

I should have known better. Yesterday, I just put down my head and worked without thinking about the end result. I focused solely on my purpose in each moment, the task at hand. Concentrating on doing small and simple things with thought and care was my duty, as it were. As the day went on, my burden felt lessened and I began to feel joy in the work, joy in small aspects that I had been overlooking in prior days.

It was a satisfying day, one that left me feeling that I had moved in some way toward fulfilling a purpose. It may not be a grand, earth-shaking one but it doesn’t need to be. It is mine. My purpose. My duty.

And that is enough to bring me a bit of joy.

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I Remember Everything

Posted in Event, Music, Painting, tagged , , , on June 18, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“In the Year 2020”- Now at the Principle Gallery

 

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I still am pretty busy working on my next show that opens in July at the West End Gallery. Little time, much to do, and lethargy to overcome. So, this morning I am just going to share a song and the painting above, In the Year 2020, that’s still at the Principle Gallery as part of my current show there. I just like looking at this piece. Brings me comfort in some way.

The song is the last song John Prine recorded before he died from the covid-19 virus. It’s called I Remember Everything. It’s classic Prine and a fitting final song.

Have a good and decent day.

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Further On Up the Road

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , , on June 17, 2020| 2 Comments »

“Elbow Room” – Now at the Principle Gallery

 

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“The difference between a path and a road is not only the obvious one. A path is little more than a habit that comes with knowledge of a place. It is a sort of ritual of familiarity. As a form, it is a form of contact with a known landscape. It is not destructive. It is the perfect adaptation, through experience and familiarity, of movement to place; it obeys the natural contours; such obstacles as it meets it goes around.”

― Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

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I am a bit distracted this morning so I will make this short. Lots of moving parts this morning with much to do and lots of thoughts running through my mind. Some are small and trivial and some more momentous. Kind of like the difference between a road and a path. The path is the smaller, more familiar one, the comfortable one we walk each day as part of our everyday world. The road, on the other hand, denotes greater distance and further destinations.

My thoughts are of both paths and roads this morning. But none of it is really anything I wish to share now.

Maybe some other time. Maybe. Maybe not.

Instead, I am just going to share a song. It’s one of Johnny Cash‘s late recordings, this one made in the final months of his life. I have commented here before that I believe the work from late in his life was as raw and powerfully deep as anything in his long and illustrious career. This is his cover of a Bruce Springsteen song, Further On Up the Road.

Fits the morning.

Have a good day.

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Age, Art, and Life

Posted in Biographical, Event, Quote, tagged , , , on June 16, 2020| 2 Comments »

Black Fish- Georges Braque

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With age, art and life become one.

—Georges Braque

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I have been very busy working on my upcoming annual West End Gallery show, From a Distance, that opens next month on July 15. Yesterday, in emails with the gallery, while we were going over some details for how the show would safely go on given the current situation with the covid-19 pandemic still in progress, I was reminded this was my 25th year showing with the gallery.

Of course, I knew this as a fact. But just reading it yesterday really brought  the point home for me.

Twenty five years. A quarter of a century.

While I was very pleased to have been with them for so long, it made me feel kind of old, to tell the truth.

While I understand that I am now one of the elder statesmen in the galleries that show my work, I still feel like a young painter most days, both for better and worse. I am often as excited by the work that emerges as I was 25 years back, still am in wonder at times that these paintings that sometimes seem far beyond my own meager understanding are products of my imagination.

And I am also as uncertain and doubtful of my abilities as I was all those years ago. Actually, maybe more doubtful than I was then. Hardly a day goes by now where I don’t say to myself in frustration, “You stink!”

And some days I find myself going from one extreme to the other, from the abyss of pure self-doubt to wondering how something so alive and vibrant came from my hands and mind. Sometimes in just an hour or two. Yesterday was one of those days.

Makes me think that Braque is right, that with age, art and life become one.  If my age, my twenty five years of doing this, has taught me anything, it’s that this time spent creating art has been the best and the worst all wrapped in one big messy, sometimes beautiful, and almost always imperfect package.

Just like life.

 

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The People, Yes

Posted in Current Events, tagged , , , on June 15, 2020| 5 Comments »

 

“Approaching Storm”- Now at the Principle Gallery


Lately, I have been reading bits and pieces from a book of Carl Sandburg poems called The People, Yes. Published in 1936, it is an deep reflection on the American people at that time, in the midst of the upheaval of  the Great Depression. It is a broad work that attempts to span the multitudes, much like Whitman and his Leaves of Grass.

As I say, I have been reading it piecemeal, picking it up at loose moments. Each time I am struck how relative it is to this time even though it is nearly 85 years old. For all the technological and societal changes that have occurred, for all the progress and sophistication we assume took place, we are still pretty much the same and pretty much in the same place. Still maintaining many of the same conceptions and misconceptions, still as biased and still as vulnerable to being manipulated.

One verse from this book that I keep coming back to is shown above, at least its beginning, #102.

It begins with bits from President Lincoln’s July 4, 1961 speech to Congress, one in which he justified his actions in the aftermath of the Confederate’s attack on Fort Sumter. In it, he outlined how the leaders of the Southern rebellion stoked the enthusiasm for conflict among the people living there through the dispersal of misinformation and fallacies. Some things never change, eh?

Reading Sandburg’s take on this is a bit scary. It seems to reflect what has happened here so well. The public has been barraged with lies and hateful, divisive rhetoric for the last three or so years to the point that we are without moorings. And now, in this unsteady state, we are experiencing the convergence of events that have been precipitated by these actions.

We are reaping the whirlwind.

And, unfortunately, the man and his accomplices who have done this, who have unleashed this awful power, can no longer control its direction or the scope and range of its destructive power.

As Sandburg put it:

 Is there a time to repeat,
“The living passions of millions can rise
into a whirlwind: the storm once loose
who can ride it? You? Or you? Or you?
        only history, only tomorrow, knows
        for every revolution breaks
as a child of its own convulsive hour
shooting patterns never told of beforehand”?

As I say, some things never change. There will always be those who try to benefit from inciting chaos and division upon the people. But, as it has always been, these devious people have never been able to reliably predict or control the whirlwind they let loose.

The public mind generally has the final word in such matters.

And it is speaking now.

 

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Diamonds and Rust

Posted in Music, tagged , , , on June 14, 2020| 4 Comments »

Been sitting here for well over an hour and a half, just listening to different music, looking at paintings and thinking on a wide range of subjects and memories, many from the distant past. There’s no nostalgia in it. Not even much wistfulness. Just tracing lines back and forth, trying to see how things come and go, how things change, how we both grow and erode with time.

And after all of that I think I am just going to play a song this morning.

Maybe it has something to do with the time spent this morning. Maybe not. I am not going to talk about it here except to say this a beautifully written and performed song. It’s from Joan Baez from back in the mid 1970’s and references her relationship with Bob Dylan in the the 1960’s with ten years perspective.

It struck a chord with me then and still does, after all these years. Here’s Diamonds and Rust.

Have a good day.
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Bacon’s Nervous System

Posted in Biographical, Motivation, Painting, Quote, tagged , , on June 13, 2020| 4 Comments »

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Painting is the pattern of one’s own nervous system being projected on canvas.

–Francis Bacon

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Ain’t it the truth?

The words of the late painter Francis Bacon certainly holds true for me, at least in certain times. There were several such days during this past week, if you need an example.

On these days I spent hour after twaddling in paint that directly reflected my own flatness of spirit, my own frustration and confusion. My reaction to the work I was producing was a dull mix of despair and anger. I sensed that it, the work and my reaction, was just a mirroring of my own reaction to the world as I was currently seeing it.

My own nervous system.

I hoped that recognizing this despair and anger would somehow provide a spark of its own. A reaction to my reaction, if you will.

But it was like throwing new colors into the mix with the result being an even more gross and ugly shade of brown and gray. No clarity or sharpness, neither in color nor in thought. The frustration grew even more.

These days reflected the pattern of my own floundering nervous system. I just wished I didn’t bother to project them on canvas.

I sit here this morning and still have the same feelings sparking dully through my synapses, making me both dread and welcome the hours ahead of me here in the studio. The dread is that these feelings will remain and show fully in the paint. The welcoming aspect comes in the hope and possibility that something in the paint– a color, a tone, a contrast– will create new sparks that will push out the dullness and flatness.

Something that will express itself in a new pattern being formed in my nervous system.

It’s this hope and possibility that comes with the beginning of every new day of painting that makes life more than tolerable. It makes it worth living because even on the worst days there is the hope that comes in the next.

I am moving on to to my next day now, filled with hope and possibility.

Hope yours is the same.

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With Machete in Hand

Posted in Advice, Biographical, Quote, tagged , , , , , on June 12, 2020| 6 Comments »

“And Dusk Dissolves”- Now at the Principle Gallery

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Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain’t no free rides, baby. No hitchhiking. And if you want to strike out in any new direction — you go alone. With a machete in your hand and the fear of God in your heart.

–Ursula K. Le Guin

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I felt compelled to put up a piece of new work from my current Principle Gallery show along with a piece of advice for aspiring artists from writer Ursula LeGuin. Make your own road, baby.  Do the heavy lifting and don’t depend on any one person to guide you through. There are no shortcuts– no hitchhiking as she puts it. You’re on your own so learn to hear what you have to say to yourself.

Show who and what you really are then stand tall. Own your road.

That’s it. I’m going to be concise because it’s a busy day for me. While my show at the Principle Galley is ongoing, I am working hard on new work for my next show which opens in July at the West End Gallery. Plus this morning I am leaving the safe bubble of my studio and home to accompany my dad on his first radiation treatment for a cancerous growth on his temple.

It’s the first time in 13 weeks that I am seeing him as the nursing facility where he resides is under lockdown from the covid-19 virus. I am both looking forward to and dreading seeing him. The dread comes from anticipating what changes may have taken place in this past quarter of a year from the dementia and skin cancer that plague him. Perhaps his awareness and power of recollection has eroded even more? Will he even recognize me now, especially with the mask I will be wearing?

I guess I’ll soon find out.

Odd days, indeed. Have a good one, folks.

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Where Can I Feel at Home?

Posted in Biographical, Painting, Quote, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , on June 11, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“The Exile’s Wilderness”- Now at the Principle Gallery

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“From the moment that man believes neither in God nor in immortal life, he becomes ‘responsible for everything alive, for everything that, born of suffering, is condemned to suffer from life.’ It is he, and he alone, who must discover law and order. Then the time of exile begins, the endless search for justification, the aimless nostalgia, ‘the most painful, the most heartbreaking question, that of the heart which asks itself: where can I feel at home?”

― Albert Camus, The Rebel

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I came across the excerpt above from The Rebel from Albert Camus while searching for something to accompany the painting at the top, The Exile’s Wilderness, which is part of my current exhibit hanging at the Principle Gallery.

This short paragraph stopped me in my tracks and I found myself reading the words and phrasing of it over and over again this morning. It summed up so well the feeling that I take from this painting and that sense of exile, of separateness, that I have often experienced.

The search for justification, the sometimes pointless nostalgia of memory, the feeling of being responsible for everything alive and for setting things in some sort of order– they all feel too familiar.

But it’s that final question that stirred me most: Where can I feel at home?

It is a heartbreaking question. I believe most of us take for granted that feeling of comfort and of being at home. But for the Exile it is an elusive thing, perhaps even an impossibility. In the absence of the real comfort of home they settle for the security found in hiding or in blending in, hiding in plain sight with large and faceless crowds.

That’s the wilderness to which I refer in this painting– a place for the Exile to hide and find security in a world where they may never feel truly at home.

And odd as this may sound, there is great comfort in this. Just having a place where one feels safe and secure is a desirable state of being for most of us because in such an environment we can create and define our own sense of home.

If you think about many of the problems facing us today, most come down to conflicts between people rightly seeking that sense of home, of safety and security, for themselves and those who would deny them that right.

There’s a lot to read into this painting, more than it lets on at first glance. Much like the Exile walking unseen and unnoticed among the crowd.

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