Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
–Bob Dylan, If You See Her, Say Hello
The Moon Resonates– Now At Kada Gallery
The paintings are at the Kada Gallery now, delivered yesterday. Out of my hands now and tentatively on their own while I sit here in a relatively empty studio. There’s always a coolness in the suddenly opened space created by the departure of a show’s works. IT sometimes make me shiver a bit.
I generally feel good about competing the task but also feel a small sense of loss in their absence. Some have shown themselves in the short time they dwelt with me to be good companions. Actually, more than that. Like family, I suppose, in that they are part of me. I guess you might say that they are that part of you that you address when speaking to yourself, either in inner dialogues or out loud.
When paintings like this head out the door, I always have a twinge of despair that they may not return, that they will head off into some new existence beyond me. Kind of like the memory of the last time you see a loved one before they pass on.
Pieces like the one shown here, The Moon Resonates, fall into that category. Maybe that feeling is because such pieces are ultimately derived from the kind of memories whose feelings they evoke.
Paintings are, after all, memorialized emotions and to see one leave means that another reminder of a memory might well be gone forever. That’s cause for a bit of reflection and a touch of despair.
Of course, the redeeming feature of this all is that there is the recognition that the work will somehow remind others of the emotions from their own memories, happy or otherwise.
Whatever memory they feel strongly enough to want to be reminded by a particular painting.
This piece spoke quietly to me, gave me a bit of reflective calm. A soother. It reminded me that though the night is often dark there is always a bit of light. The dark might blot out the details but there is light enough to see the essence of things, that sense of the whole which really matters.
I hope it finds a home that sees such things in it. If not and it comes back to me, I will no doubt be giddy with joy, like that joyous feeling of relief one has when a pet who has been missing for days somehow finds it way home.
The show, Places of Peace, opens Friday, November 4, at the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA. I will be in attendance at the opening reception which runs from 6-9 PM. If you can, please stop in and take in this painting and the others. We’ll talk, if you want. Your choice.
Here’s a Bob Dylan song, If You See Her, Say Hello, from his Blood on the Tracks album. The lyrics might well describe the feeling of a lost love that I sometimes attach to my works. That might sound a bit goofy to some, but if you have one of my paintings, say hello for me. They’ll know what I mean.
Redtree Times 