An art which isn’t based on feeling isn’t an art at all… feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique – all these are in the middle.
-Paul Cézanne
Since I am a little short on time this morning as I am in the final days of wrapping up my approaching Principle Gallery show before delivery later this weekend, I thought I’d share a thought from Paul Cézanne that pretty much sums up my view on art, that feeling and emotion is the primary driver behind all art.
Here’s a short video of some of of Cezanne’s better known works for you to examine for their levels of feeling.
If you work diligently… without saying to yourself beforehand, ‘I want to make this or that,’ if you work as though you were making a pair of shoes, without artistic preoccupation, you will not always find you do well. But the days you least expect it, you will find a subject which holds its own with the work of those who have gone before.
-Vincent Van Gogh
I really just wanted to show these two Van Gogh paintings that feature the falling rain as part of the overall composition. I recently have been particularly interested in seeking out lesser known Van Gogh paintings. We all know the major one, Starry Night and the like. There’s a reason they are so special to us. But there is something quite exciting about these more obscure pieces, something that fills in the blanks between the better known work.
But beyond that, the sentiment above from Van Gogh really resonates with me. Sometimes it seems as though those paintings which you aim at with all your greatest effort fall flat while on those days when you have little idea of where the work will go, something special emerges quite unexpectedly.
It is those days and those painting that you crave as an artist. Oh, it is gratifying to create work that you feel is well within your body of work. That is to say, work which follows a path you have trod upon many times before. But to have those days and those pieces that surprise you– well, that is beyond gratification. It has an almost religious aspect, like an affirmation of one’s belief in something greater.
But those days are often rare and come without a hint of what may emerge. Even sitting here now, I don’t know if today will be one of those days. But just knowing that it is possible makes me anxious to get at it.
Enjoy the Van Goghs and I am going to move into my day.
There’s too much to do this morning so I am running this post from 2016, adding a piece where Van Gogh copied a well known Hiroshige painting. But just as then, I am anxious to get my brush back in my hand soon.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.
― Rumi, 13th century Persian poet
The new painting at the top, titled Symphony of Silence, is an 18″ by 36″ canvas. This weekend, it is headed down to the Principle Gallery as part of my solo show, Between Here and There, which opens June 4th.
I have written in the past about what I see as the connection between painting and music, how I see some of my pieces as simple songs and others as more intricate compositions. Perhaps symphonies or concertos.
This, in my eyes, is one that seems simple at a first glance. It is sparse and without great details. But the more I look at it, the more I see in it. How each element and color plays off the next and how they are fortified by each. It feels like there are rhythms and melodies running through it, from side to side as the terrain flows and up and down with rise of the moon. There is inward and outward movement with the light of the stars and the undulation of the trail. The blocks that make up the night sky seem to swirl and rotate in all directions. The far mountains appear almost as sound waves.
There is seemingly constant movement throughout the landscape and the skyscape. Almost a cacophony.
Almost.
It is silence.
Somehow the movements, the rhythms, and contrasts all run together at some point.
Harmony. Made up of the stars in motion countless lightyears away and the ancient wisdom contained in the stillness of the land and water. Always there but in silence.
It is a simple piece but one that constantly shares something more than it lets on with a mere glance.
Here’s a piece of music to accompany it, a longtime favorite of mine and one that has played a large part in how I came to view my own work. It’s from composer Arvo Pärt and his composition Tabula Rasa. This is the second movement, fittingly titled Silentium. It feels right with this painting.
I have been super busy lately but when I get a free minute I have been listening to short bits of poetry read online. Most are only a minute or two long which provides a short break in the thought process which I find refreshing. I particularly enjoy works read by narrator Tom O’Bedlam.
Who this Tom O’Bedlam actually is has been a question for some time since he emerged around 2008 as a reader of poetry and garnered a folowing. He is an anonymous reader whose name is based on an equally anonymous 16th century poem, Tom O’Bedlam’s Song, which is considered one of the great anonymous poems in the English language perhaps the greatest of the mad songs, those verses dedicated to the ramblings of the seemingly insane. There is quite a long tradition of mad songs in poetry which makes one wonder about the link between poets and madness.
But the identity of the present day Tom O’Bedlam is still up in the air though his name does link to the website of contemporary poet David J. Bauman. Even so, it is never quite clear that he is the voice of O’Bedlam and his own readings sound much different. It is surmised that he uses an audio program to achieve the timber and tone of O’Bedlam’s distinctly pleasing voice.
I don’t really know and to tell the truth, it doesn’t matter much. I just enjoy the results and the choices of the poems selected for him to read. I particularly enjoy the work of British poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) who often has a slightly acerbic, misanthropic skew to his very engaging work. I used one of his poems, High Windows, years ago for the inspiration for a painting.
Here’s a short example of Larkin’s work as read by the aforementioned Tom O’Bedlam. They linked the verse with the stunning painting at the top, Peace; Burial at Sea, from a favorite of mine, the exquisite JMW Turner. Maybe that’s why I chose this one today.
Can’t really say but this is Next, Please. Take a break if you can and give a listen. Maybe it will refresh you, as well. If not, at least it make make you think a bit.
Basically, I no longer work for anything but the sensation I have while working.
-Alberto Giacometti
That sounds about right.
I am in the midst of prepping work for my upcoming June 4 show at the Principle Gallery. Prepping consists of framing and matting and staining and sanding and varnishing and this and that and so on. All important in presenting the work but none of it is actually the painting that I call my work.
And I am severely missing that work in these last couple of weeks as I have had to put down the brush to finish off the show. The months leading up to this point were the most intense period of work that I have had in several years. My productivity has waned a bit in recent years and this show, after a year that was memorably awful for us all, demanded a new commitment to the work.
And I believe that I found it.
I locked myself in basically over the past several months and just worked. It was in recent weeks, as I approached this point where I would have to stop painting for a while to prep the show, that a realization came to me. I saw clearly that how important that sensation I had while working, as Giacometti puts it, was to me, how it drove everything in me and unlocks so many things there.
I need that sensation. It is a self-generating source of energy and the path to that place where I am at my best, where I have an opportunity to be more and expand my understanding of this existence.
This realization required a deepening of my commitment to my work. I want and need to delve deeper and the work is the only way to get there.
Just felt that needed to be said aloud, even if only for myself to hear. Now, I have to get back to prepping so that I can truly get back to that work.
The title of this new 20″ by 30″ painting is Una Semper which translates from the Latin as Always One. It’s part of the group that will soon be heading down to the Principle Gallery for my annual solo show there. This year’s show is called Between Here and Thereand opens June 4.
This would be what I would call one of my Baucis and Philemon pieces based on the Greek myth that I have documented here on a number of occasions. I have done a number of iterations on this theme over the past decade or so and they remain among my favorite pieces to paint. There something in the dynamic of the two trees intertwining and pushing upward that stirs a feeling within me.
For some reason, the pair tends to bring most any composition to a satisfying fulfillment. These pieces always feel complete and self-contained. And I like that.
This piece has these elements and has a brightness and pop that is really appealing to my own sensibilities. It just seems alive which is a big deal for me.
I thought I’d pair this new piece with this week’s Sunday Morning musical selection. which is from the 2005 album, Devils & Dust from Bruce Springsteen. It was his third acoustic album, and like the other two, Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad, remains a favorite of mine with memorable songs throughout, including the title track. This song is titled All I’m Thinkin’ About and features a falsetto over a driving melody. I am always surprised at how effective his falsetto is in his songs. This is one of those songs that always grabs my attention when it comes on while I am working.
Okay, got to get going because there is still lots to be done as I prep for this show. No rest for the wicked as they like to say. I would like to believe it’s the other way around — no rest for the righteous— but that might just be quibbling.
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d, I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things, Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago, Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
–Song of Myself 32, Walt Whitman
A little busy this morning but wanted to share a few lines from Uncle Walt. I find that it has a soothing effect much like the effect of watching the wild creatures that live around us. My current best animal friend is Howie the older tom turkey who sometimes runs down the path toward me when he sees me coming, gobbling loudly as he comes. I know it’s just because of the sunflower seeds I put out for him and his other bird friends but his evident joy in seeing me always makes me smile.
I think we all appreciate someone displaying a little bit of joy when they see us, even if it’s just an old tom.
I sure do.
Here’s a reading of an excerpt from Whitman’s Song of Myself from his eternal classic Leaves of Grass.
Now I’m standing in the wake of forty years And from this prison I have broken free and clear And I’m praying that the morning won’t catch me here
— Full Moon, Peter Bradley Adams
The small painting above is called Under the Blue Moon. It’s headed to the Principle Gallery for my annual show there which open June 4. This year’s show is titled Between Here and There and is my 22nd show at the Alexandria gallery.
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 22 years since my first solo show at the Principle. So much has changed in the world. My work has also changed but it is an incremental thing, one that I would like to believe maintains a consistency even as it changes.
This piece is a good example of it, painted very much in the same style with a similar process to the work I was producing back at that first Principle Gallery show in 2000. But while it maintains its recognizable features, it has changed, with colors that are more intense and a bit more layered and complex. The suns and moons in my work have grown in size over the years, as a result taking on a more prominent role in the composition.
That’s definitely the case here. This piece just feels good for me with the colors and angles of the forms triggering a lot of different responses within me. It has a feeling of the vulnerability of a confession for me, the Red Tree standing in the wide open beneath the unwavering and all-knowing eye of the bluish moon.
What hasn’t it seen? What doesn’t it know?
Makes me wonder and that’s all I ask of it.
Here’s song to go with it. It’s from singer/songwriter Peter Bradley Adams, whose songs, which are classified as being Americana which is a term that says a lot without saying much about what the music really entails in subject or form. I have just recently started exploring Adams’ work and this song felt right this morning. It’s called Full Moon.
And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.
–Late Fragment, Raymond Carver
I was looking for something yesterday in the bedroom here in the studio that I call the library. It’s a room lined with bookshelves and the floor littered with boxes with old unframed paintings. It’s a great place in which to retreat when I am feeling stuck. I can pull out a book and read a passage that I haven’t thought of since I last read it, in some cases that being forty years ago. It always feels like there is something new or old or, at least, interesting to find in there.
But yesterday I stumbled across two long thin pieces of old matboard held together with artist’s tape. I couldn’t remember what might be sandwiched between them and opened it, revealing the piece shown at the top. Seeing it brought back a flood of memories.
It was an old painting done back in the 1990’s, probably 1997. It is called Late Fragment after the short Raymond Carver poem above. I had once had it framed and displayed it at the West End Gallery many years ago. I remember distinctly discussing it with several folks at an opening. But it eventually came back to me and for some reason it ended up being unframed. It obviously has bounced around in my old studio in the woods and now my current one as it is stained and a bit grimy.
But there are things in it that had slipped my mind that came back yesterday. I remembered that this piece was originally meant to be in a handmade book of my small paintings accompanied by favorite short poems. I did a couple back around that time. I haven’t seen them in many years and have no documentation on them that I can find but I remember binding them with thick heavy thread along with bookcovers made from heavy dense cardboard covered in rice paper. I would love to see them again.
This piece was meant to be in the center of one of these books and would fold out to reveal itself in whole. You can see the creases where it was folded which gave it a segmented look that I have replicated in paint may times since. If I remember right, the heavy watercolor paper made it too thick for the book in which it was intended so it ended up in a frame instead.
It’s not a great piece. There are so many ways in which it would be different now. But there’s something in it that is endearing to me. Maybe it’s rawness of it which is accentuated now by the grime and stains that adorn it. Maybe it’s attraction comes from this as a metaphor for the aging process we all go through.
Or maybe it’s the nascent quality of the painting itself. The way the tree is handled as more of a silhouette than with real details of any sort. Or the tiny sun/moon off in the distance. That was not uncommon in my work at that time.
Or maybe it was just the reality and potential held in it. It was a whole entity then, both as a painting and as a symbol of who I was then. It remains true now but I have changed in the intervening years and while I remain basically the same, I am different. My views and ways of expression have changed and evolved, hopefully for the better.
But who knows? Maybe twenty some years from now, if I can keep myself alive that long, I will look back on this post or a recent painting and say the same thing:
Yes, that was me and while all in it is still true, this is where and who I am now.
I want to be quiet this morning. No, I need, not want, to be quiet this morning.
Need to be quiet.
It’s one of those days when I wake up in the dark of the early morning. My dreams, which evaporate as soon as my feet touch the cool floor, have somehow dashed any facade of confidence I may have been wearing and I am already a bit glum before I have even seen the first light of morning. I slip on my jeans that are covered with paint and as I slide my right leg in, my toe catches a small tear in the pant leg. For some reason, my jeans always tear in this same spot, just above the right knee.
But this morning my toe catches that tear and in the darkness I hear it rip even more. I feel anger and frustration layering on top the glum blueness I woke up with and I want to just let my toe rip the hell out the jeans then throw them across the room in the dark. And scream so hard that my diaphragm aches and my throat burns from the effort.
But I don’t. I restrain myself and just stand there in the dark stillness, taking a long breath of cool air. Then I calmly ease my leg into the torn jeans. My eyes adjust a bit to the dark and I can see out the window that morning light is beginning to sift through the trees. The sun will soon be up.
I tell myself there’s still time for hope. I just need to be quiet and let it find its way here this morning.
I make my way along the path through the woods to the studio and I feel much of the frustration and anger slip away. I am still a bit glum and blue but lying on the kitchen floor with my Hobie, the faithful and loving cat with which I share my space, helps. Her loud purrs of satisfaction are like an elixir. I am tempted to click on the news to catch up and immediately turn it off after about 45 seconds of it make my blood pressure tick up a few notches.
I need quiet but I need some music. I remember this piece from the great jazz pianist Bill Evans, Peace Piece. I put it on and its quietude and gentle tone bring me back. And the music keeps playing and I know I have dodged a bullet of sorts. My blue is okay now. It’s like an old grouchy friend who I know how to deal with.
I can manage this. All I need is some quietness, some light, some hope.
I am showing a new piece at the top, one that I call The Peaceful Stillness. It’s 18″ by 24″ on aluminum panel and is part of Between Here and There, my solo show at the Principle Gallery which opens on June 4.
I wasn’t planning on writing this blogpost for this painting but it seems to work with it. I know I felt an easing of my angst and frustration on seeing this painting. It mirrored my attempts to find that quietness within. So, while I should probably talk about the process or meaning or symbolism in it, I am going to let it stand as is this morning.
It did what I wanted it to do. No, what I needed it to do.
Here’s Peace Piece from Bill Evans if you need some help on your end.
A little busy this morning but wanted to share a few lines from Uncle Walt. I find that it has a soothing effect much like the effect of watching the wild creatures that live around us. My current best animal friend is Howie the older tom turkey who sometimes runs down the path toward me when he sees me coming, gobbling loudly as he comes. I know it’s just because of the sunflower seeds I put out for him and his other bird friends but his evident joy in seeing me always makes me smile.
Redtree Times 