Redtree Times

I have been a fan of the paintings of Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) for some time now. I was reading about him earlier and came across this quote  that caught my attention, making me think about what I hoped to accomplish in my own work.

I often speak about creating work that has an immediate emotional impact achieved with colors and forms. But maybe, as Hartley’s words have prompted me to think, this first purely visceral and emotional impact is pure exuberance. Just a gut reaction that comes in that instant before the mind has time to engage.

A shout that makes you turn and look.

While that is good and desired, it’s doubtful that it can stand by itself and have a lasting effect unless it has an intellectual aspect to engage the viewer’s mind. There needs to be a balance between the mind and the gut.

If you turn at hearing a shout and the person doing the shouting is shouting just to make you turn and has nothing more to say to you, you keep moving and soon forget that person. But if you turn and the shouter has something more to offer, you might linger a bit to consider what is being said and engage in a conversation.

When you do move on, you take something from this engagement with you, something that will stay with you.

I am not sure this an apt analogy but it immediately came to mind on reading Hartley’s words. I don’t exactly know how this mind/gut balance works or how it can be accomplished in reality. Maybe even consciously trying to do so throws the whole thing off kilter.

It’s early in the morning and I am just thinking here. Time to go try to put it into action…

—From April 2018

Marsden Hartley- Portrait of a German Officer, 1914

I have always said that you do not see a thing until you look away from it. In other words, an object or a fact in nature has not become itself until it has been projected in the realm of the imagination.

– Marsden Hartley

Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) is a favorite of mine both for his paintings and his words, which often express thoughts about painting that ring true for my own experience. For example, I love this quote above. Some of the strongest images for me are those that are taken at a glance, sometimes while driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour.

If the imagery strikes me in a powerful way, my mind immediately starts breaking down the image into a sort of shorthand, blocking in the forms and organizing them in a way that registers deeply. It is simplified but contains the elements and the effects that struck me. Sometimes I will move my arms while doing this, trying to create a muscle memory of the rhythm of that which I am seeing in my mind.

The image is thus entered into my imagination. Everything else around it that is not part of image that spoke out to me seems to not exist in that moment. It s a funny process and is deeply ingrained to the point that I don’t even think about it but for this reminder from Hartley.

Got to get to work. Have a great day.

–From March, 2019

Marsden Hartley- Painting Number 5, 1914-15

All things that are living are expression and therefore part of the inherent symbology of life. Art, therefore, that is encumbered with excessive symbolism is extraneous, and from my point of view, useless art. Anyone who understands life needs no handbook of poetry or philosophy to tell him what it is.

–Marsden Hartley

I think this is an important point from a favorite artist of mine, Marsden Hartley. Trying to paint work that is pointedly symbolic, that tries to force meaning that doesn’t naturally flow from the subject, often feels flat and lifeless to me. Or extraneous and useless as Hartley put it.

Generally, the subject evokes its own meaning and feeling and the best the artist can do is enhance it with their own skills and style — the artist’s tools for storytelling– to make it apparent to the viewer.

Sounds easy. It’s not.

We often add symbology or clutter that either clouds, alters, or detracts from the inherent meaning of the subject.

We complicate when we should simplify.

It’s the story of communication throughout time. Simplicity always triumphs.

I hope that makes sense. I am tired this morning and it sounded okay halfway through my first cup of coffee. A couple of hours from now I might have questions about this.

— From August 2021

Marsden Hartley- The Iron Cross, 1915

Marsden Hartley- Portrait, 1914