Redtree Times

“Through the Trees” at the West End Gallery Ends Today

Let me give my love to you
Let me take your hand
And as we walk in the dimming light
Oh darling understand

That everything, everything ends…

This edition of my annual solo exhibit at the West End Gallery, this year titled Through the Trees, comes down at the end of business today. I offer many thanks to those of you who were able to visit the gallery to take in the show and much gratitude to those who gave new homes to so many of the paintings in this show.

I don’t know the exact number but I have done somewhere in the area of sixty of these solo shows around the country over the past twenty-some years. Without exception, from the most highly successful show to the least, there is always that same mix of satisfaction and sadness at the end of each of them. 

I always find myself at this point, grateful for simply having the experience and a little wonderstruck that anyone attends at all, let alone purchases my paintings. The idea that someone finds something worthy in something I do never fails to amaze me, even after all the years and the many shows.

I still often pinch myself at my good fortune just to make sure it’s not one of those wonderful dreams that sometimes visit us in our sleep. The ones that feel too good to be true, that leave you feeling disappointed when you wake up and your world is as it was before you closed your eyes.

And I guess that’s where the sadness comes into the picture as each show ends. Even when I feel as though I have done as much as I could with the work in a show and even when it has exceeded all expectations for myself and the gallery involved, it’s difficult to let go of a wonderful dream and get back to the reality of the moment.

But as the songs, everything ends.

And I know how to do it now. I’m an old hand at it and have the scars and calluses to prove it.

So, again, many, many thanks to all, especially to Jesse and Linda Gardner at the West End Gallery, for allowing me to have another wonderful dream. I cannot be more grateful.

Here’s that song I mentioned. It’s Meet Me On the Equinox from Death Cab For Cutie.