Redtree Times

Lakesong— At the Principle Gallery Show, Opening This Friday

There is a lake that one day refused to flow away and threw up a dam at the place where it had before flowed out and since then this lake has always risen higher and higher. Perhaps the very act of renunciation provides us with the strength to bear it; perhaps man will rise ever higher and higher when he no longer flows out into a God.

― Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche, of course, was famed for uttering the words God is dead. I am not here to dispute or defend his theory on the existence of God and Heaven.

That’s not my job and I am not interested in swaying anyone from whatever they might believe unless, of course, those beliefs prove harmful to or denigrate others.

Other than that, believe what you wish. More power to you.

But I do like Nietzsche’s lake metaphor in the excerpt above from his book The Gay Science, which was also where he first wrote the words God is dead.

The idea that we should live for the life we have before us rather than a hoped for afterlife makes sense to me. It’s something I have often brought up here in many posts including some very recent ones. I often think that we have immediate access to both heaven and hell here and now on this earth. It simply depends on how much we are willing to work towards one or other.

That’s a pretty rudimentary thought, one that I don’t really want to go into further here today. But it does serve as the premise for what I see in the painting shown above, Lakesong. It’s a 30″ by 15″ canvas that is part of my show of new work that opens Friday at the Principle Gallery.

It contains symbolic elements that I often employ. The field segments and rows symbolize work and the orchardlike trees the bounty of nature, for example.

There is steeple in the structures in the midground representing belief. But, as in the metaphor of Nietzsche, the lake and the Red Tree, symbolizing man here, has risen above it and seems to be living fully in the moment, in a type of tranquil communion between the Red Tree, the lake and hills before it and the sun above. It creates a very peaceful feeling for me, one that makes me take pause and try to see whatever bits of heaven might be around me at the moment.

And there are plenty.

That, of course, is just my take on it. You might not see it that way or want to dispute my reading. That’s okay. I would be disappointed if everybody saw or reacted to it in the same way.

Let’s end this today with a nice piece of music from contemporary pianist and composer Greg Maroney. The title is Lakesong and, unsurprisingly, blends very well with this painting of the same title.