Redtree Times

Student and Master— At West End Gallery

“I sit in the chair and think about the word chair. It can also mean the leader of a meeting. It can also mean a mode of execution. It is the first syllable in charity. It is the French word for flesh. None of these facts has any connection with the others. These are the kinds of litanies I use, to compose myself.”

― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

Reading this passage from author Margaret Atwood made me chuckle a bit because it reminded me of how my mind often operates in the morning. Just bursts of things with the vaguest of connections to each other, somehow finally leading to something tangible. I think it’s a necessary trait for writing this thing and maybe for my painting as well.

The fact that she chose a chair also made me think about the Red Chair that has appeared sporadically in my work for the past 20 years or so. Maybe I chose it because, like Atwood’s litany of thoughts on the chair, it can spur many thoughts and interpretations. It certainly spurs on curiosity about it. During the openings for most of my shows, I inevitably get a number of questions about the meaning of the Red Chair.

Dawn of Memory

The empty chair itself is a simple and powerful symbol of respect in many cultures for past ancestors or someone loved who is absent. Many folks have told me how they see their own deceased family members in those chairs. It can represent grief or loss. I personally see the chair as a symbol of personal memory, seeing the chair as a representation of myself in the memory of past experiences. These are just a couple. I am sure it is symbolic of other things as well.

The questions about the Red Chair increase when it’s suspended in a tree such as in the painting shown above on the left, Dawn of Memory, which is at the West End Gallery now as part of the ongoing Little Gems exhibit.

How the Red Chair came to be aloft in the tree is a story that began when I was a kid. I’ve told it innumerable times at openings and Gallery Talks over the years but here it is again:

Growing up, we lived in the country in an isolated old farmhouse with an old barn across the road. I happened to drove by the old place about ten years back and snapped this photo of the old barn, now in a much more advanced stage of decay than when I was running around there. It was pretty solid and complete at that earlier time, though seldom used. In front of the barn, to the left of it here and just out of the shot, is a large and old stone chimney, all that remains from the home of an early settler to the area, a coach driver who was killed there in an Indian raid in the late 18th century. A small cemetery with old slate stones from that family and a few others was nestled in the edge of the forest nearby. For a kid, it was a place filled with memory and myth, a great place to play and let your imagination run wild.

One summer when I was 8 or 9 years old, I came across a dead woodchuck lying next to the barn. I don’t know how he died. He didn’t appear to have been shot or attacked in any way. He was just there– dead.

As the summer progressed and he decayed and dried out, a vine passed through his body and by summer’s end was suspended a foot or two in the air. To the eyes of a child this was something magical. I was struck by the power of the earth to reclaim its creatures. Everything, our whole existence, seemed very ephemeral after that…

The idea of a tree growing through and lifting an object such as a chair, which is very representative of human existence, is a continuation of that early fascination. It wasn’t until I had painted several pieces with the hanging chair that I began to also see the symbolism of the empty chair, which in some cultures represents the recently deceased. That is what I often see now in that hanging tree– the family members and ancestors who have passed on.

Again, this is my interpretation of this work.  I am sure others see things of their own in these pieces. It means something has clicked between them and the painting.

And that’s a good thing. All I can ask of it.

This is a post from 2014 that has been reworked and added to. I thought I would make it into my common triad by adding a song. The song is Norwegian Wood from the Beatles and their Rubber Soul album. This song isn’t really about chairs outside of the line:

She asked me to stay
And she told me to sit anywhere
So I looked around
And I noticed there wasn’t a chair

So, in fact, it is about an absence of chairs. Aah, it doesn’t matter. It’s a song that I like, one that rests in the chair of my memory, and that good enough for me this morning. Give listen if you’re so inclined: