Redtree Times

To a Higher Mount

I know now: I do not hope for anything. I do not fear anything, I have freed myself from both the mind and the heart, I have mounted much higher, I am free. This is what I want. I want nothing more. I have been seeking freedom.

–Nikos Kazantzakis, The Saviors of God, 1923

Can we ever be fully free of fear? 

 I don’t really know how to address that question. There seems to be so much fear in this country and around the world that it seems like a futile question at this point.

It’s a form of fear that has become so ingrained in the culture that it has become one of the prime market motivators. It has transformed into a manufactured entity that moves product. It creates ratings, builds political power and sells guns and gold and so much more.

I guess the question should not be whether we can be free of fear but rather: Can we continue to exist with so much fear? 

I’m thinking of this past week and the several young people who were simply in the wrong place being shot without confrontation by people filled with unfounded fears. I sometimes end my posts here kidding around about being an old codger waving my fist at kids, telling them to stay off my lawn. That doesn’t seem so funny at the moment because now Grandpa is scared and might be shooting to kill. 

How do we function as a society when the simple act of approaching someone to ask a question or ask for help becomes a potentially life-threatening act?

Bertrand Russell had it right: Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

We are experiencing that fear and cruelty right now. Can we get past it? Can we begin to aspire to such wisdom?

I don’t know.

I guess we can only focus on ourselves as individuals. Try to move to a point where we are above fear. That’s not to say we should not live with a degree of caution– there are dangerous things in this world– but we cannot continue to exist in our current state of paranoia and cruelty.

Okay, I’ve had my say.  It’s up to you now. You have to get to that loftier point on your own even though as the song goes, I want to take you higher. The original versions of that song from Sly Stone are unmatched and I have played them here before. But Tina Turner did many damn fine performances of this classic. Here’s a great television performance of it from the late 60’s.

No fear present in this. Just a whole lotta energy.

Now listen and leave. I am not shaking my fist but I do ask you to please stay off my lawn.

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Georges Seurat- A Sunday on La Grade Jatte

I painted like that because I wanted to get through to something new – a kind of painting that was my own.

–Georges Seurat

Sometimes when I speak to schoolkids, they show me their work. The kids display an interesting mix of pride and embarrassment as they sometimes tell me that they don’t think their drawings or paintings are very good. I know that feeling well. I was those kids once, with an aim that far exceeded my ability at that point. A friend sent me an image from a 6th grade newsletter that had a drawing of mine from that time in it that had me gasping at how poorly I drew at that time. I think it was supposed to be Dr. J dunking a basketball but who could tell? It might have been Eleanor Roosvelt.

It was cringeworthy but it helped me in being able to tell these kids that where they are now is not where they will end up so long as they continue to practice and take small steps forward. You can’t judge a journey by the first steps on the path.

I thought I would share this post from about four years back that dealt with this idea of development and growth. Plus, it’s just a great way to share some good work from Georges Seurat.

I subscribe to a service that provides information such as auction results for artists, both living and dead. It is always interesting to scan the auction results for my favorite artists, to see how they are currently viewed by buyers. For example, anything by Vincent Van Gogh always draws huge money, even the work that doesn’t possess the signature brushwork and color of his better-known works. The iconic pieces, of course, go for astronomical sums. His popularity with the public is as strong as ever but that is no surprise.

It’s also interesting to scan the results to see work from artists other than their more famous paintings that hang in museums. We tend to think of artists by their best work and seldom see the complete chain of work that runs through their career, never really seeing their weak links or the developmental work that led to their signature style or voice.

The image to the right, Paysage Avec Cheval, a painting that recently went up for auction at Christie’s London, is a good example of this. It’s a lovely piece but you might not guess the artist. This is from Georges Seurat whose work, such as his most famous work shown at the top of the page, is forever tied to pointillism. But scanning through his records, you can get a better sense of the evolution of his work. [ Note: This painting of a horse, small at about 6″ x 9″in size, sold in 2014 for over $1.8 million which, while it is a large number, is a tiny fraction of what his better-known work sells for.]

I am also looking for consistency in the artists whose work I am scanning through. Again, we always think of the artists in terms of their best-known works and are often unaware of the totality of their body of work. Some artists are incredibly consistent, even in their early formative years. Others have high peaks and deep valleys, with a huge disparity between their best and not-so-best work. I am always encouraged by both types of artists.

I strive for consistency in my own work and am proud of the consistency of quality and style that has been established. But, of course, there have had dips and valleys in my work, particularly in the formative days of the early days.

At that time, I still thought of the great artists only in terms of their best works that hung in the great museums of the world, thinking that they simply got up and turned out this incredible work each day. I could not fathom the possibility that they had swings and misses, that they had periods of struggle and uncertainty. It’s encouraging to see that those icons whose work I revere often struggled in the much same way as me and that the great works we know them for were not created in a vacuum. They came with great effort and day after day of moving ahead in often small increments.

I think any aspiring artist who feels intimidated by the great works should take a few minutes to look through the whole of the works of their heroes. They might be encouraged, as I often have been, to know that the path they are on is not so much different.

While we’re here, let’s look at some of Seurat’s other work. It starts with a video that combines his work and the music of Vivaldi. It does a nice job of interspersing his earlier work with the work displaying the pointillist style that is so associated with him. Then the first two images below the video are examples of his earlier pre-pointillist work and then several examples of his better-known pieces.

[This is a mashup of a couple of posts from years past]

Georges Seurat- Les Terrasiers

Georges Seurat- Attelage Rural

Georges Seurat- Bathers at Asnieres, 1884

Georges Seurat- At the Circus

Georges Seurat- The Circus Sideshow

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Night’s Desire— At the West End Gallery

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes. The situation that we hoped to change because it was intolerable becomes unimportant. We have not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely determined to do, but life has taken us round it, led us past it, and then if we turn round to gaze at the remote past, we can barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible has it become.

–-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time (1913-1927)

I keep thinking about this passage from Proust, about how our desire sometimes changes because of our inability to change other things. I know that it’s true for most things.

Once we see that we have no chance at altering whatever situation we wish to change, we rationalize away our reasons for desiring that change in the first place. The process of minimizing its importance begins.

As Proust writes, life takes us around it.

But I wonder if there are things that are impervious to this? Things too big, too important to rationalize away our concerns and desires. Things that we just can’t normalize and accept.

I think I know the answer, at least for myself. You might see it differently. Human nature allows us to pick and choose our desires and passions irrespective of those of others.

I guess the best you can do is hope that others share your desires, your passions, and your concerns. In numbers, the intolerable has a chance to be remembered.

Just thinking this morning while I drink one more cup of coffee. That brings me to this Bob Dylan song, One More Cup of Coffee, from his 1976 album which is titled– you guessed it– Desire.

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Arthur Dove- River Bottom, Silver, Ochre, Carmine, Green, 1923.

It is the form the idea takes in the imagination rather than the form as it exists outside.

–Arthur Dove

I’m in the middle of working on a large group of new work for my upcoming solo shows. At such times I am always looking for a groove where the work flows easily and in one direction, like a river. But sometimes the groove begins to feel more like tunnel than a river, constricted and with no chance of overrunning its banks and expanding its scope. At such times, I find it’s sometimes good to pull back and examine earlier work and the work of those who influenced it.

When I was first starting to paint, one of the artists whose work I looked to for inspiration was the Modernist painter Arthur Dove, 1880-1946. It was the way in which he merged abstraction with representation and his use of recurring elements in his work that drew me in. Even now, when I look at the ball/circle shape that I use so often as my sun/moon I think of some of Dove’s paintings. My upcoming show has many so Dove has been on my mind lately.

I was also attracted to his work since we were both from the Finger Lakes region, Dove born and raised in Canandaigua and educated at nearby Cornell. The idea that we both experienced many of the same landscapes growing up made me want to look closer at his work. Like the Lawrence Durrell passage I quoted last week, I believe “we are children of our landscape” and examining the work of an artist shaped by a similar landscape is always intriguing, seeing how the forms they take in are transformed within the artist’s imagination.

There is sometimes commonality, which might be viewed as reinforcing, but more often there are much different takes on the common landscape. And that is actually more inspiring and influencing as it allows me to take a different perspective on a landscape I know. It opens the mind a bit. And that’s what you’re looking for in your influences, the work that pushes you forward.

Though there is not a lot of writing from Dove, there are a couple of other Dove quotes that mesh well with my own viewpoint on painting:

I look at nature, I see myself. Paintings are mirrors, so is nature.

and this one, which has appeared here in the past:

We cannot express the light in nature because we have not the sun. We can only express the light we have in ourselves.

Here’s a video of Dove’s work that I shared here several years ago.

Arthur Dove- Morning Sun, 1935

Arthur Dove- Sunrise, Northport Harbor, 1929

Arthur Dove- Me and the Moon 1937

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Symphony Serene— At the West End Gallery

Sweet moonlight, shining full and clear,
Why do you light my torture here?
How often have you seen me toil,
Burning last drops of midnight oil.
On books and papers as I read,
My friend, your mournful light you shed.
If only I could flee this den
And walk the mountain-tops again,
Through moonlit meadows make my way,
In mountain caves with spirits play –
Released from learning’s musty cell,
Your healing dew would make me well!

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

I have been working on a large canvas in recent days and it has been calling to me all night It’s at that point where moves past the awkward stages in the process. There are steps in my painting process where the surface sometimes goes flat and listless before suddenly transforming into something quite different and alive. Coming into the studio this morning, I have been eager to get to it, to experience that transformation.

As a result, I am making this short this morning. For this week’s Sunday Morning Music, here’s Beck and his Blue Moon. No, not that Blue Moon— his own Blue Moon.

Now, excuse me, There’s the best part of a painting waiting for me.

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GC Myers, Painting Fragment 2023

invent yourself and then reinvent yourself,
don’t swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself
and
stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.

–Charles Bukowski, No Leaders Please

This morning, I was looking for a photo on my phone of a page from a book. It had a paragraph that resonated with me and I thought I might write about. But in whizzing through the images on my phone– my feral cats, paintings in progress, a tick bite on my wrist, and so on– I came across the image at the top of the page.

It was simply a closeup of a segment of a new painting where three blocks of color converge. I don’t really remember taking this photo but it must have spoken to me in the same way as it does this morning, even with the uneven lighting on it.

After just a quick glimpse of this small detail within a painting, I could see numerous other pieces rising from its inspiration. It felt like looking at a portal that transports one to a different dimension filled with different possibilities and potential, one that allows you to see yourself as a different version of yourself.

A fleeting glimpse of self-reinvention.

There’s something exciting in this quick view of what could be. It presents itself and you take it in, seeing its possibility. It then becomes a challenge. A dare to move past the what-is to the what-might-be.

Do I dare?

I don’t know yet. We build up all sorts of reasons to ignore the possibility, to stay safely within our boundaries, that which we know to be. A fear of the unknown. Like the maps of old times used to say: Beyond this point lie dragons.

But  growth, artistically and personally, requires the courage to at least take tiny steps into that unknown at some point.

Do I dare?

I don’t know but most likely, the answer will get to a yes at some point.

Art is reinvention, after all.

Maybe studying this fragment a bit more will get me there.

In the meantime, here’s well known Charles Bukowski poem, No Leaders Please. I was surprised at how many videos of this poem were online. A number of them use the Tom O’Bedlam reading from SpokenVerse along with a variety of background music and imagery. Of these, I like the one below though they don’t use the Bukowski title, instead opting for Reinvent Your Life. But it works.

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GC Myers, 2002

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has conquered all the difficulties, after one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

–Frédéric Chopin

I was going through some images of older work from the early 2000’s and was struck by the sheer simplicity of some of it. Not that my current work doesn’t have considerable simplification of form and composition. It does.

But this work seemed even more starkly simple and direct. It had a different sort of certainty and confidence than I possess now. Maybe naively bold?

I don’t know.

But I find myself envying that level of daring, that willingness to cut away all detail in order to get right to the point. It was work that went in a straight line where my later and more recent work takes a more roundabout route to get to what is pretty much the same destination.

I have no preference in comparing the two. There is a sameness in both in that I see myself in each. Then and now. Both are products and representations of their time and where I am or was in my life and where we were or are in this world. Both routes have their charms. At least, I think they do.

There’s no real point here this morning. Just a reflection on the value in simplifying things. It’s something I have to do periodically to remind myself about the value and understanding contained in simplicity. As C.S. Lewis put it:

It’s like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness. The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer.

We often get lost in the maze of life, seeing complexity where we should see simplicity. Maybe simplicity is the real answer to everything–to life, art, music, science as Teller points out below, and so on.

I’ve had my reminder. I can get happily back to work now. Here’s some simple Chopin from pianist Chad Lawson to enjoy as you leave.

It is often claimed that knowledge multiplies so rapidly that nobody can follow it. I believe this is incorrect. At least in science it is not true. The main purpose of science is simplicity and as we understand more things, everything is becoming simpler. This, of course, goes contrary to what everyone accepts.

–Edward Teller, Conversations on the Dark Secrets of Physics

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Archaeology: Deja Vu– At West End Gallery

Genius is the gold in the mine. Talent is the miner who works and brings it out.

–Marguerite Blessington (1789-1849)

I came across the quote above from the Irish Countess Marguerite Blessington, who was a writer and hostess of a famed literary salon in London who is best known for her published conversations with Lord Byron. Hers was yet another name with which I was not acquainted.

But her words made me both think and chuckle a bit. Made me think of some of the lyrics from the old Lee Dorsey song, Working in the Coal Mine:

Five o’clock in the mornin’
I’m already up and gone
Lord, I’m so tired
How long can this go on?

So, here I am at a little after 5 in the morning, getting ready to head down in my own version of a coal mine. Not quite the same, of course. Not as dark and dirty though if you saw the clothes I work in you might not think there was much of a difference.

I am ready to head down in the mine looking for my own version of the gold, the genius contained within according to the good Countess. Now, I would hesitate to call it genius but whatever is contained in that mine it has value to me.

Maybe we all have genius of some sort in our mines in which we toil. Maybe we don’t recognize it as such and don’t value it as highly as we should.

But if it is genius, mine is a very thin and spotty vein. Takes every bit of effort I can muster and all the limited talent I possess to extract the tiniest of nuggets.

To quote another song: It don’t come easy.

But it is the mine I in which I chose to toil. That’s probably another difference between real coalminers and me though we both might feel equally at home in our respective mines. I like my mine even on those many days when there is no gold, coal, or even lead ore to be found. Just being in the dark stillness away from the outer world is a form of gold in itself.

But there are days when the lines from the song above ring true. Oh, lord, how long can this go on? Except for those times when I am going through creative blocks, which I guess that would be the equivalent of running into a vein of granite(?), that feeling doesn’t last long. Once I start digging, that fatigue pretty much goes away.

Okay, enough of this. I got to get back to swinging my pick. There’s something good– gold, coal or whatever– down there I can pull out today, I just know it.

Here’s Lee Dorsey and his Working in a Coal Mine, written by the great Allen Toussaint.

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At Land’s End— At West End Gallery

God, it was good to let go, let the tight mask fall off, and the bewildered, chaotic fragments pour out. It was the purge, the catharsis.

—Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

I came across an article this morning that had been forwarded to me by a friend several years ago in response to a blog post.  Appearing in the online magazine Psyche, it was written by three researchers ( Julia Christensen, Guido Giglioni, and Manos Tsakiris) and was largely about how creativity and wellness were often boosted by allowing the mind to wander. It’s an interesting article that discusses the neuroscience behind their research into the wandering mind.

While those that daydream have often been chided through history as being lazy and counterproductive, there has also been a school of thought that encourages random thought and rumination, believing that it can lead to creative breakthroughs and greater productivity. The Germans had a phrase for this concept of the wandering mind, ‘die Seele baumeln lassen,’– ‘let the soul dangle.‘

Interesting stuff. One part of the article that struck a chord with me discusses how art causes biological responses and often serves as a prop for emotional catharsis. As they put it:

“…art can help us adapt to the immediate source of pain by acting as a prop for emotional catharsis. We all know the strange, pleasurable, consoling feeling that comes after having a good cry. This experience appears to be precipitated by the release of the hormone prolactin, which has also been associated with a boosted immune system, as well as bonding with other people. The arts are a relatively safe space in which to have such an emotional episode, compared with the real-life emotional situations that make us cry. Even sad or otherwise distressing art can be used to trigger a kind of positive, psychobiological cleansing via mind-wandering.”

I immediately responded to this point as this is something that I experience on a regular basis. I often am moved to tears by artistic stimulus while in the studio, most often in the form of music, film or the written word. It is such a common occurrence that I have come to use this response as a barometer for how emotionally invested I am in the work I am doing at that time. When I feel most immersed in my work, I find that I am receptive and reactive to emotional stimuli. I have found that the work I consider my strongest comes at times when I am on this edge of induced emotional catharsis.

It’s something that has taken place with me for decades now and it’s interesting to see that there might be a neurological component behind my response. I think I am going to go now and see if I can produce some more prolactin this morning.

Click here to go to this article. It’s a relatively short read plus there is an audible version available on the page if you would rather listen.

[I posted this article here about three years back. I thought it fit the morning and added the words at the top from Sylvia Plath, changed the accompanying painting and added the song below which is Falling Slowly. This version of the song is from Cristin Milioti and Steve Kazee from the Broadway cast of Once. I still prefer the original Glen Hansard/ Markéta Irglová version from the film but this is a lovely performance of the song and I’m a Cristin Milioti fan.]

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The Color of Night– New & Coming to Principle Gallery

We are the children of our landscape; it dictates behavior and even thought in the measure to which we are responsive to it. I can think of no better identification.

–Lawrence Durrell, Justine, 1957

This is a line I have highlighted in an old dogeared copy of Justine, the first book in the Alexandria Quartet from Lawrence Durrell. Even before I had an inkling that I would ever be an artist and painter of landscapes, this idea of our landscape affecting our behavior and becoming an integral part of how we see ourselves struck a chord in me.

I think we have two landscapes, the one that we live in externally and an inner landscape primarily based on our external world but manipulated and shaped in a way that allows us to find those things we need in either. Maybe it is security, tranquility, connection or communion with something larger than we find in the external world.

I am not putting this very eloquently, I know. It’s one of those concepts that is more felt than articulated. I have often pointed out that if I could put these thoughts and feelings in words, I would have no need to be a painter.

This is probably as good an example as you’re going to come across which means I am going to just let it be as it is except to add that what I believe the artist is trying to do is create a better version of the landscape in which they live and love. At least, better in ways that speak to that artist.

The hope is that the altered world created speaks to and appeals to others as well. Maybe inspires something in them that allows them to add a new color, form, or feeling to their own inner landscape.

Sometimes that is the case. Sometimes not.

After all, you may not want to live in my world– inner or outer. And that’s okay. As it should be.

Here’s a song I like very much from the Black Pumas. It’s called Colors and might well fit for today as singer Eric Burton describes his own inner and outer landscapes. I can see his world from here.

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