Redtree Times

Riding Rhythm– Soon at the West End Gallery

Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can’t use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can’t dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.

— Virginia Woolf

I’ve pointed out more than once that I know nothing about boats nor sailing nor the waves in the ocean. But that lack of knowledge doesn’t take away any of the enjoyment and satisfaction derived from painting the boat pieces such as the one at the top.

It’s called Riding Rhythm and is a 10″ by 20″ piece on aluminum panel that is part of my show at the West End Gallery that opens next Friday, July 22. As the title infers, I see this as being about being in rhythm with the elements– the waves, the winds and the light.

I think it’s the idea of this rhythm that makes me enjoy painting the boats pieces so much. I see painting, and all other art, as the capturing of the rhythms that surround us.

Art makes those rhythms apparent.

And painting a boat on the waves is perhaps as direct a form of representing rhythm as one can find. It is all motion and light. Throw in the symbolism of our smallness set against the grand powers of nature along with the sense of control versus chaos and contrasts of light and dark, and you’ve got yourself a painting.

And Riding Rhythm is what I believe is an excellent example of this. There’s a lot in this piece that I like that isn’t fully captured in the image of the painting above.

You’ll have to come to the West End Gallery to see that.

Here’s a musical piece to go along with this painting. I came across the music of the Yoshida Brothers who are a duo playing the traditional Japanese shamisen which is a three-stringed that sort of looks like a square banjo. It is played by plucking or slamming the strings with a plectrum that looks kind a scraper. The Yoshida Brothers have a very eclectic sound that mixes traditional Japanese music and sounds many other musical influences. I sometimes hear Celtic or Bluegrass influences in some of their pieces and hard rock and electronica in others.

This is a piece called Storm. As I said, I think it pairs well with this painting.