Redtree Times

GC Myers- Reason to Believe 2002

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

― C.S. Lewis

I was running through some old files and came across the image at the top. It stopped me because it reminded me of the Ukrainian flag that is front and center in recent times. The painting is from back in 2002 and is called Reason to Believe.

My own interpretation of the painting, using contemporary events, is that the sky and field represents Ukraine. The Red Chair, which normally for me represents family or memory, here symbolizes the Russian invasion. And the white sun represents the rest of the world watching from a distance.

I am sure that this is a different interpretation than the one that I held in 2002, though it was painted in the aftermath of 9/11 and all that came with it. Time of turmoil have an affect on many artists, myself included.

So, maybe the interpretations from both times are closer than I might recall. The title seems to indicate that.

We want to believe that there can be a peaceful world, one filled with sunlight and bountiful fields of grain. One where everyone is safe and without hunger.

Not want to believe. Need to believe in order to continue to get each morning and face the challenge of the new day.

And to do so we need a reminder, a reason to believe.

Maybe that is why the flag of Ukraine is such a potent and perfect symbol for the struggle that is taking place. The two fields of color represent the blue sky of peace and the yellow wheat fields of prosperity and abundance.

Reasons to believe. Reasons to live. Reasons to stand and fight.

The symbolism of that flag is simple and elegant, speaking volumes in a way that anyone can take in with a mere glance.

Given that context, my painting, simple as it is, seems superfluous and busy.

Here’s a song from Bruce Springsteen from his classic 1982 solo album, Nebraska. The title for the painting at the top came from this song, Reason to Believe. 

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Andrew Wyeth- Garret Room

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

–Henry James

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Clear Voice— Now at Kada Gallery, Erie, PA

I announced the date of my annual show at the Principle Gallery the other day. I thought I should also give the dates for my other shows as well, since they are set and on my schedule. It includes, of course, my annual July show at the West End Gallery plus a highly anticipated return to the Kada Gallery after a two-year interval due to the pandemic and a change in gallery ownership.

As I mentioned the other day, we hope to resume some sort of Gallery Talk at each of the galleries but are not scheduling them at this time like we would normally. We will wait to see how the situation with the next variant of the coronavirus plays out before making any decisions on dates or format.

This year’s schedule goes like this:

• Principle Gallery      Alexandria, VA  –  Opening Friday, June 3, 2022
• West End Gallery     Corning, NY –  Opening Friday, July 22, 2022
• Kada Gallery            Erie, PA-  Opening Friday, November 11, 2022

Of course, there will be previews of the new work in the coming months so I hope you’ll follow along and hopefully make it to one of the shows.

Please take a moment to visit the link below ( click on the image) for a fundraiser for a good friend of mine, Brian Pappalardo, who has been hospitalized for the past ten months. He has been waging a battle against severe illness on one front and against the financial strains of the costs of healthcare and disability on another. He’s a good and humble guy with a long road to recovery still ahead of him. He could use any help you can muster. Thanks!

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Norah McGuinness (Irish, 1901-1980)– River to the Sea, 1959

St. Patrick’s Day 2022. 

My thoughts on this holiday always go to my mom whose birthday fell on this date. She would have been 90 today. I grew up thinking we had Irish blood through my mom’s family. Many of them had an Irish sounding name, after all. Found out through genealogy that it was not Irish at all.

Actually, they were English. Very English.

Turns out that the Irish part of our family came through my dad’s side. Took many years to find much on it but with DNA testing and the greater access to records via the web, I found that these ancestors came out of Tipperary in Ireland around 1850 as a whole family unit, first settling in Rhode Island. Both parents died within months after landing here and their children, many of adult age, dispersed across the country in the expansion that took place in the second half of the 19th century.

The typical American story.

For this St. Paddy’s Day, I thought I would share a piece of art above from a well known Irish artist and illustrator of the 20th century, Norah McGuinness. I really liked– and felt a kinship with– her use of color and forms in this piece. She worked in a visual language that I can understand.

Also, let’s hear an Irish song. Well, it’s an Irish song written by an American that has become a very popular song in the Irish culture. It’s The Galway Girl from Steve Earle. The version below is from the Irish musician Mundy who had a hit with this song in Ireland in 2008 that topped the charts for several weeks. I think you can hear why it caught on so well.

Have an enthusiastic St. Paddy’s Day.

Before going, I would like to pass on a link to a GoFundMe fundraiser that we set up for a friend of mine, Brian Pappalardo. I am not going to get into the whole story here right now but Brian went into the hospital back in the first days of June, 2021 and has been hospitalized since that time. He will soon be into his 11th month in a hospital setting. Outside of being in ambulances, he has only been outside once in that time.

He was intubated and on a respirator for the better part of three months, much of that time semi-conscious. He was left unable to move his head, arms, hands, and legs and could barely speak because of the tracheotomy tube in his throat. He has been going through extensive therapy after finally landing at the excellent Cayuga Medical Center, after a tour of several other hospitals and a nightmare stay in a notorious nursing facility that will remain unnamed. He has regained most of the use of his arms and hands and can walk short distances with a walker but will be wheelchair bound for at least the near future. Maybe longer.

His insurance coverage is nearly exhausted and he is facing mounting expenses plus the possibility of being discharged to fend for himself. He will be dependent on disability payments and without his mother, with whom he lived and cared for, since she passed away a couple of months ago.

For those of you who know Brian, who was formerly an editor at the Elmira Star-Gazette and a freelance journalist after downsizing, you know that he is a kind, humble and self-effacing person. The kind of person who would do what they could to help someone else in need and who would never think to ask for help for himself.

Since he won’t ask, I will.

Brian needs help now while he faces mountains of physical and financial challenges for the coming months, if not years. Please check out the fundraiser link below and help if you can or share it with your friends.

Help Brian get back on his feet, literally and figuratively.

Thanks so much.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/5agn9-help-brian-get-back-on-his-feet

https://gofund.me/a25b2096

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Studio with new work on easel , March 2022

Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”
Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.

― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Busy this morning but wanted to share info for this year’s annual solo show at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. This year will mark my 23rd solo show there. The exhibit opens on Friday, June 3, and is titled Depths and Light.

I am tentatively planning on being in attendance at the opening reception on June 3. We are still hoping for a gallery talk or similar event at the gallery later in the year. The last one there was in September of 2019. It would be good to talk with folks again.

Or maybe not, as I am way out of practice. Talking to Hobie, my studio cat, or the feral cats in my garage is not quite the same thing.

To sum up: Principle Gallery, Alexandria, June 3.

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— William Butler Yeats, From To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

The post below is one of the more popular posts from this blog over the past several, getting a number of views each day. I read it again early this morning and though I remembered the part of the Yeats poem about the the almost impossible task of dealing with shameless liars, realized that I had forgotten much of the story behind the poem. I thought it would be worth running again. Yeats is always worth another look.

It starts with the situation in early 2019 so you’ll recognize the shameless liars referenced.

I can’t say that I am a big Bill Kristol fan, the conservative political analyst, but yesterday he deftly used the excerpt above from a W.B. Yeats poem to describe the Mueller hearing of the day before. It so well described an honorable man dealing with the current occupant of the white house [thankfully now the former occupant] and his minions in congress [unfortunately, still there for the most part] that I wanted to know a bit more about that particular piece of verse.

It turns out that the poem from which those lines come is titled To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing that was included in a small volume of poems called Poems Written in Discouragement 1912-13.

The poem is at the bottom of the page and at first I thought it referred to someone in Yeats’ universe, a writer or artist or playwright, who had put their all into their work for years and years only to never be recognized for that work while others– who this person at least equals in talent and effort– gain greater recognition. That seems like a logical interpretation.

Turns out there is a different story behind the poem.

It has to do with an Irish art dealer named Hugh Lane who was trying to establish a public art gallery that would bring modern art of that time to Dublin at the beginning decades of the 20th century. He proposed to give the city his collection of 39 modern masterworks from Renoir, Manet, Degas, Monet, Daumier, Pissarro and Morisot so that they might establish a museum/gallery. The painting at the top from Renoir, The Umbrellas, was part of his collection.

To that time, Dublin had yet to display the new art of the age and its city fathers and religious leaders were not swayed by the offer. They viewed the new art as being decadent and with an air of libertinism to it. This turned into a heated public battle in which Yeats and others in the Irish artistic community fought to bring the new art culture to the country. They eventually lost and the collection ended up in the possession of the National Gallery of Great Britain after Lane died in the sinking of the Lusitania by German U-boats in 1915. He was returning from NY where he had sold two great pieces to what would become the Frick Collection. The Lusitania was only eleven miles from the Irish coast.

The battle for Hugh Lane’s collection has been fought continuously for the past century between the National Gallery and the Irish government. There are a lot more details so I am not going to get into the whole affair here. There is great article in the Guardian that goes into everything that transpired.

I just find it interesting how Yeats could turn a poem that dealt with the loss of a public debate about art and philanthropy into a poem that feels like it could be applied to many people who are in creative fields and may never realize the recognition their work may well deserve.

Or to a prosecutor dealing with shameless liars.

Here’s the whole poem:

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Imagine what you want
Then get out of the way
Remember energy follows thought
So be careful what you say
Be careful what you ask for
Make sure it’s really what you want
Because your mind is made for thinking
And energy follows thought

—Willie Nelson, Energy Follows Thought

Willie Nelson, still going strong at 88 years old, premiered a new song on Friday. A very Willie song in sound and thought with a bit of zen thrown in.

It’s called Energy Follows Thought. It’s something I have known and talked about for many years, this idea that we eventually become a form of what we say and think.

That can be a good or bad thing.

And I think Willie is putting it out there both as advice and as a cautionary notice. Too many of us speak and act (and react) without thinking, never realizing that our words and thoughts push us towards a future version of ourselves.

I think the first verse of the song shown above speaks volumes on this subject so I will step aside and let Willie’s music tell the rest.

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Julius Caesar and the Crossing of the Rubicon, Francesco Granacci, 1494

What are these dark days I see?
In this world so badly bent
I cannot redeem the time
The time so idly spent
How much longer can it last?
How long can it go on?
I embrace my love, put down my hair
And I crossed the Rubicon

— Crossing the Rubicon, Bob Dylan

Alea iacta est

The die is cast.

Those were roughly the words Julius Caesar uttered before sending his troops south across the Rubicon River towards Rome. The Rubicon is a river, its waters tinged red from iron deposits, that once marked the boundary between Rome and its provinces. Crossing that boundary and bringing troops to Rome was outlawed by Roman law, considered an act of treason and insurrection. Julius Caesar’s decision to follow a course of treason set off a civil war that ended with his victory and ascendance as Dictator for life over the Roman Empire.

Crossing the Rubicon has become a well worn phrase since that time, representing a conscious act from which one cannot retreat from nor reverse.

The point of no return.

It is an action of great weight, one whose consequences often reverberate for great periods of time.

It feels like certain political leaders in this world have crossed the Rubicon several times in recent years and that as a result the world we once knew may soon exist only in memory.

The masses will live with the consequences from the conscious acts of a powerful few, those who saw the symbolic Rubicon before them and chose to cross it.

What those consequences will be are still to be determined and we do have a say in that outcome. That die is yet to be cast on that future.

It will be what we say it will be if we are willing to make it so.

For this Sunday Morning Music, here is a recent Bob Dylan song from 2020 that is custom made for this post. It’s Crossing the Rubicon.

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Mark Rothko- Untitled (Yellow and Blue) 1954 detail

“You might as well get one thing straight. I’m not an abstractionist… I’m not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships then you miss the point.”

― Mark Rothko, 1956 Interview with Selden Rodman

Busy morning ahead with painting and plowing from what I hope is the last snowfall of this winter. But I thought I would share a Mark Rothko painting ( actually a detail of its lower section) and a video on it from Sotheby’s auction house ( where it sold for $46.5 million in 2015) along with several Rothko quotes.

Rothko (1903 -1970) was a big influence on my early work. The idea of expressing the big human emotions through simplified forms and color really spoke to me because I never looked at painting as a craft but more as a means to express those forms of emotion that well up inside because they are sometimes too difficult to express in words and voices.

Another aspect that attracts me to Rothko is that he, like Kandinsky, was often eloquent in speaking about his work and art in general. And in those words I found that my own already developed perspectives often largely meshed with and echoed both of these artists’ words and views.

For example, in the quote below the idea that a picture lives by companionship is one that is central to my work.

“A picture lives by companionship, expanding and quickening in the eyes of the sensitive observer. It dies by the same token. It is therefore risky to send it out into the world. How often it must be impaired by the eyes of the unfeeling and the cruelty of the impotent.”

Here a few more that also speak to me.

“It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.”

“When I was a younger man, art was a lonely thing. No galleries, no collectors, no critics, no money. Yet, it was a golden age, for we all had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. Today it is not quite the same. It is a time of tons of verbiage, activity, consumption. Which condition is better for the world at large I shall not venture to discuss. But I do know, that many of those who are driven to this life are desperately searching for those pockets of silence where we can root and grow. We must all hope we find them.”

Below are two links– I am not sure if the video will fully embed– that will take you to the short video on this Rothko painting. Well worth a couple of minutes.

//players.brightcove.net/104524641001/Q12GqRfew_default/index.html?videoId=4204776647001

https://www.sothebys.com/en/videos/mark-rothko-untitled-yellow-and-blue-1954

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