Where the Road Ends— At the West End Gallery
‘Light came from the east,’ he sang,
‘Bright guarantee of God, and the waves went quiet.
I could see the headlands and buffeted cliffs.
Often, for marked courage, fate spares the man
It has not marked already.’
And when their objection was reported to him —
That he had gone to bits and was leaving them
Nothing to hold on to, his first and last lines
Neither here nor there–
‘Since when,’ he asked,
‘Are the first and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends?’
―
The short poem above from Seamus Heaney made me think about this painting, Where the Road Ends, and a number of my other pieces.
So often I think of my paintings as taking the viewer into the picture toward an ending point. Everything carries the eye inward to a desired point within the picture.
The end of the painting, its destination.
But maybe I should reconsider and see it as being a beginning, a point of departure where the central object of the piece, the Red Tree in this case, begins an outward journey, one that takes it away from me and all I have both invested and taken from it.
Maybe the poem that I see in it is not coming to an end but only beginning.
I guess, in a way, I have always known that. The tree in my Red Tree paintings is always the last element added and that carries with it a finality. That final brushstroke on the Red Tree generally marks the end of my creative input.
It is the place where the road ends for me.
But at that point, the painting is just beginning its life, its journey. Like the lives of many people, its journey in this new life may be one filled with days of boredom, of neglect, and feeling underappreciated. It might even be hidden away or discarded, replaced with something newer
But on the other hand, it might be the beginning of a life where it inspires and is loved and appreciated.
I can never know for sure which way it might go when my ending with these works becomes a beginning for them and someone else. I can only hope for good things for them and savor my time and experience with them.
And a poem ends with a line that begins another…
Redtree Times 