Coolway— At Little Gems, West End Gallery
Returning to the source is stillness, which is the way of nature. The way of nature is unchanging. Knowing constancy is insight.
—-Lao Tzu
This coming Friday, February 9, is the opening date for this year’s edition of the Little Gems exhibit of small paintings at the West End Gallery. As noted here in the past, the Little Gems show was the first time I showed my work in public. That was in 1995 which makes this my 30th go-round with this show. I don’t know if it’s from the fact it was my first showing or just my affinity for small paintings, but this show has always been a favorite.
One of my new pieces from this year’s show is shown above. I call it Coolway. There’s a stillness in it that I find appealing along with a sense of coolness that plays off the warming colors beneath the snow. I have long been fascinated with extracting color from scenes where it isn’t expected or instantly perceived. My hope is that someone looking at this sees it as a snow scene and experiences it as such before they recognize the restrained underlying colors.
I would call them monochromatically colorful, if that’s a thing. I don’t really know. It just popped into my head a moment ago. Whatever the case, it’s a piece that appeals to that sense of rightness I often speak of.
It also has a sense of simplicity that appeals to me, with the forms and colors within those forms carrying the feel of the piece. Though some might not see it, I sometimes feel as though I get away from that simplicity and this feels like a return to finding pleasure in what is there as well as what is not there.
And that’s saying something.
We so often decry what we don’t have that we overlook the beauty of what we have.
And that’s what I see here. There’s not much there but there is a richness in what is there.
Here’s a favorite song and performance from the late great Nina Simone that speaks to the importance of seeing what we have. This song is from 1968 and is a combination of two separate songs from the musical Hair with original lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. Simone rewrote and combined the two songs for her performance. Pretty strong stuff…
Redtree Times 