Redtree Times

RedTree: Continuum— Coming to Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

In this dark and wounded society, writing can give you the pleasures of the woodpecker, of hollowing out a hole in a tree where you can build your own nest and say, “This is my niche, this is where I live now, this is where I belong.”

–Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

My annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery opens on Friday, June 14. This year’s edition will be my 25th such show at this marvelous gallery located in the heart of historic Alexandria, Virginia. The title for my first show was RedTree which marked the beginning of the ubiquitous tree that has been linked to me for the last quarter of a century.

I thought it was only fitting that this year’s anniversary show be called Continuum: The RedTree at 25.

I have been asked innumerable times over the years about the RedTree, about its origins and its meanings. The meaning of it has evolved over the years but its origins still reside in my desire to create my own niche with my work, something that could stand apart on its own without bringing instant comparison to the work of others. Work that would live according to its own rules if there were to be rules at all.

The kind of work where someone could recognize it from across a room and know it was part of my little world.

I realized this early on when I first began painting. Like most beginners, I would try to copy the work of artists I admired then compare them to see how I was progressing. It was a useful exercise and it helped me in many ways, teaching me about composition as well as different materials and techniques.

However, at a certain point I began to see that if I continued in this traditional manner, even if I branched out a bit, my work would always be subject to comparison which was something I wanted to avoid at all cost.

There is a saying, Comparison is the thief of joy, which in several forms has been blindly attributed to Mark Twain, C.S. Lewis, Teddy Roosevelt and others, though its true origins are unknown. Regardless of its origins, it rang true for me.

Nobody who believes they have done their best wants to be compared to someone else. I still dislike it when people try to take me out of my niche and compare my work to others. I also try to avoid comparison when talking with other artists about their work. I figure their work deserves to feel some of the joy that dwells beyond comparison.

I knew that in comparison I would inevitably come up short. I was never the best at anything. I was never the smartest kid in school nor the funniest, fastest, strongest, or the best at whatever category you might choose. There were many who were better at drawing and writing even in the little world I knew.

I was– and remain– average through and through.

However, I knew that, even being so middle of the road in all attributes, that there was something singular in me that deserved expression. I believe that this exists in all of us, if we can just uncover that thing that expresses who and what we are individually, beyond all comparison.

Nobody can be as good a you as you are yourself.

With that belief in mind, I set out to find my own thing.

It turned out to be the RedTree.

There’s a lot I could say about how it has taken on its own life over the decades or how the process that expresses it has changed, evolved, and grown over that same time. It has become a symbol with many meanings for many different people but remains, for me, a symbol for the true expression of our individual self.

The RedTree is the niche I have created, that place where I live now.

Where I belong.

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In the High Country– At West End Gallery

Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Working this morning. Almost wrote something but didn’t want to commit the time needed to make it satisfying enough to share. As difficult as painting sometimes is, writing is a much harder task for me.

So, we’ll leave this morning with a triad of image, word, and song devoted to self-reliance. Love those last sentences in the passage above from Emerson’s Self-Reliance:

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

Words to live by.

Here’s this week’s Sunday Morning Music. It’s Eddie Vedder with his song, Society, from the Into the Wild soundtrack. This is a live performance with New Zealand musician Liam Finn accompanying Vedder.

Listen and leave, please. As Garbo famously said, I vant to be alone…

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Pablo Picasso- Guernica, 1937

Artists who live and work with spiritual values cannot and should not remain indifferent to a conflict in which the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake.

–Pablo Picasso

I always worry about alienating people who come to this blog to read about art and are greeted with my opinions and beliefs on the world. But reading the words above from Pablo Picasso this morning reminds me that my art is a product of all that I am and all that I witness in this world. I like to think that my work is about the human spirit and emotion. As such, I can’t remain indifferent or ignore those things that set off my emotional alarms nor those that eat away at what I see as the collective human spirit that we all share.

I am sharing this today because it feels like we are once again in a time when the highest values of humanity and civilization are at stake. In the coming months I will not doubt express my opinions and observations on what is taking place here. I will try to refrain from it becoming excessive. However, these things that are taking place ultimately affect my work and as such will elicit thoughts from time to time on what I am witnessing.

It might not seem connected to my work on the surface, but it is there. You’ve been warned.

The first paragraph above was written four years ago in relation to a post from a couple of years before that which featured some other words from Picasso as well the painting above, his masterpiece Guernica which depicted the bombing of the Basque village of Guernica by Nazi and Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War. It is considered the most powerful anti-war painting in history. The post itself was concerned with how artists use fabrication to reveal truth.

Here it is:

***************

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

—Pablo Picasso

****************

Many of my favorite artists worked in the first half of the 2oth century, producing their greatest works in times when the world was under great stress. All experienced two World Wars only decades apart and– in the case of Picasso– the Spanish Civil War in between. Here, we had the Great Depression and times of social transformation and spiritual upheaval. Even when the work didn’t overtly deal with the events of the day, much of the work reflected on the collective consciousness of that time.

I think that is so because art is, just as Picasso so succinctly states, a lie that makes us realize the truth.

Artists fabricate, often creating work that is on its surface pure fantasy with little relation to the world as others might observe it. But their fabrication is made up from everything that impacts them– their knowledge, their observations, their opinions and emotions, and all that they come in contact with.

Artists take in the world to create work that is often pure fabrication.

Some might call it a lie.

But what seems the lie often proves to be built of ultimate truths, just constructed in a manner that allows others to see this truth clearly.

I don’t know that we artists always succeed. I certainly don’t feel that I do as often as I would like. But when a piece succeeds and shows us something far beyond what its surface represents, it is a true revelation.

Believing that, so long as we feel deeply and continue to create our lies, we will at some point reveal a truth.

Got to get to work now. Those lies don’t just tell themselves.

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I Don’t Feel So Good–Darwin’s First Mardi Gras, 1994

Clever people seem not to feel the natural pleasure of bewilderment, and are always answering questions when the chief relish of a life is to go on asking them.

—Frank Moore Colby, The Colby Essays

Then:

Can’t get my mind organized this morning, can’t seem to want to focus on any one thing. Had a lot of ideas for the blog but just lacked the desire to follow through so I am just going to play a song this morning accompanied by an early painting from about 30 years back. It’s titled I Don’t Feel So Good- Darwin’s First Mardi Gras and was painted on August 1, 1994. It’s not much but it always makes me smile.

The song is a favorite of mine, Dead Flowers, from the Rolling Stones and their 1971 album, Sticky Fingers. But the version below is from the late Townes Van Zandt. I can’t say that it’s better or worse than the Stones version but it’s one that I like very much.

So give a listen and I’ll try to get my act together this morning…

Now:

Speaks to my own bewilderment when I run this edited and updated post from years ago that was just a filler even then. I did add the quote at the top from the early 20th century educator/author Frank Moore Colby and did switch out the image used in the original post. Maked me feel like I really did something.

Now I can move on to my real work. That’s where I feel a little more focused. And for as much as I enjoy my bewilderment at times, that’s a good thing.

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To a Higher Mount— At West End Gallery

The world is an illusion, but it is an illusion which we must take seriously, because it is real as far as it goes, and in those aspects of the reality which we are capable of apprehending. Our business is to wake up. We have to find ways in which to detect the whole of reality in the one illusory part which our self-centered consciousness permits us to see. We must not live thoughtlessly, taking our illusion for the complete reality, but at the same time we must not live too thoughtfully in the sense of trying to escape from the dream state. We must continually be on our watch for ways in which we may enlarge our consciousness. We must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given us, but we must somehow learn how to transform it and transfigure it. Too much “wisdom” is as bad as too little wisdom, and there must be no magic tricks. We must learn to come to reality without the enchanter’s wand and his book of the words. One must find a way of being in this world while not being of it. A way of living in time without being completely swallowed up in time.

—Aldous Huxley, Shakespeare and Religion

There’s a lot packed into this summarizing paragraph from an Aldous Huxley essay that discusses the religious implications of The Tempest from Shakespeare. Each line seems to hold some tidbit of advice that stands on its own while still reinforcing the whole.

As an artist– I guess that’s what I am calling myself these days– the line that spoke to me, besides Our business is to wake up, is this: We must not attempt to live outside the world, which is given us, but we must somehow learn how to transform it and transfigure it.

Artists live in this illusory world and create their own set of illusions within it in order to get along. For me, part of this is in my painting. It is my transformation of the world into something more palatable to my own tastes, my own beliefs and understandings.

I say artists but non-artists do much the same. Most of us interpret and remake the dream of this world that is set before us into forms with which we can live– a way of being in this world while not being of it.

Hmm. Don’t know if that adds anything to anything this morning. It’s certainly not a complete or well thought out essay. It’s more of a jumping off point. I might roll it around in my head a bit more today as I work.

Maybe you will as well.

No? Yeah, I probably won’t either…

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Be not blind, but open-eyed, to the great wonders of Nature, familiar, everyday objects though they be to thee. But men are more wont to be astonished at the sun’s eclipse than at his unfailing rise.

—Orchot Tzaddikim

It’s Eclipse Day.

Here in western NY they are anticipating throngs of eclipse watchers from the nearby larger urban areas that are out of the zone of totality. Buffalo is expecting about an influx of about a million such folks with Rochester expecting somewhere in the 300,000 range. Niagara Falls is jammed from what I understand.

Our area is just out totality, somewhere in the 98% range but we are expecting big through traffic on the roads leading to the zone of totality which is about 40 minutes away. All those people have to get there and back somehow.

Of course, the weather is the question mark today. Though we had a spectacular sunny day yesterday, we are expecting cloud cover for the eclipse. Maybe there will be some sort of break in the clouds at some point. Who knows for sure?

We are heading to a nearby spot with about 2 minutes and 20 seconds in totality. I am interested in the phenomenon of this event but tend to agree with the thought above from the Orchot Tzaddikim, a German book on Jewish ethics that was anonymously written in the 15th century. This is a remarkable natural event but has little importance in historic terms nor does it rank above the natural beauty that surrounds us every day.

As for the conspiracies and superstitions attached to eclipses, I am not expecting anything other than the darkness of the eclipse and a lot of traffic. I don’t expect the dead to rise from their graves or anything like that. However, I would kind of like it if The Rapture took place. There would be a lot less traffic on the roads, shorter lines at the supermarket, fewer televangelists, and so on. And if all those people who believe they would be raptured away truly were suddenly gone, the world might well be a less contentious place without their moralizing, along with their judging and attempting to control the lives of others.

I don’t know about you, but I would gladly volunteer to be Left Behind if that means I am free of that.

Then we could enjoy the natural wonder of this place in relative peace and quiet.

Here’s some music for the eclipse, a tune from the Danish String Quartet, a group that deftly mixes folk and classical traditions. This song, Shine You No More, is derived from the work of a 16th century English composer.

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Soloist– At Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA

It is very dangerous to go into eternity with possibilities which one has oneself prevented from becoming realities.  A possibility is a hint from God.  One must follow it.  In every man there is latent the highest possibility, one must follow it.  If God does not wish it then let him prevent it, but one must not hinder oneself.  Trusting to God I have dared, but I was not successful; in that is to be found peace, calm and confidence in God.  I have not dared: that is a woeful thought, a torment in eternity.

–Søren Kierkegaard

It is a shame to be afraid of trying to do big things, to fear putting big ideas in motion. To doubt and fear to venture beyond our comfort zones is a recipe for regret.

I know it in myself.

I dislike myself immensely when I fail to think bigger, when I have lost the confidence that I can overcome the failure that might come with risking much. I feel cowardly when I settle for being less than I know I can be. I feel weak when I rationalize away my own potentials for the sake of feeling safe, even though I know there is no satisfaction in that safety.

To stay the same, to deny possibility for the sake of the perception of security, is not a victory in any way.

The fear of risk outweighing the desire for what greater good might be attained and the contraction of one’s potential to be less than one knows is possible is a grave danger for any person.

And I believe I sense it in this country at this moment. [This was written in 2019 but the sentiment remains much the same]

Maybe that’s my own projection. What do I know?

Anyway, here is this Sunday’s musical selection. It’s from a favorite album of mine, Let It Be. No, not the one from the Beatles. It’s a 1984 album from The Replacements, a Minneapolis based band who was highly influential on bands such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam. This song is I Will Dare.

This post ran five years back. However, it says everything I was thinking this early morning and I am super busy working on a big piece that is staring me down even as I write this. Plus, I just needed to hear this song this morning.

Maybe you need to hear it, as well.

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Vincent van Gogh, Irises, 1890

The task is…not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees.

― Erwin Schrödinger

I came across this quote from physicist Erwin Schrodinger that deals with dimensional perception. I have to admit to not knowing much about the quantum physics to which he refers with these words but the sentiment behind it could be describing the driving force behind this painting and much of what I attempt to do as an artist. I have maintained for some time that art is not about clever ideas or extraordinary subjects but in changing our perceptions of the ordinary, in trying to reveal those dimensions of the visible world that remain unseen to us.

The example I often cite is of Van Gogh‘s painting of a pitcher filled with irises. It is an painting of an extremely ordinary subject, a vase filled with flowers. A common floral painting that has been the subject of perhaps a million or two painters over the ages. Yet seeing it, especially in person, one feels that unseen animating energy of nature and the force of Van Gogh’s perceptions of it. It vibrates with energy. It is no longer a simple pitcher of irises but has become a conduit to a new and deeper dimension, one that delivers us closer to the essence our being.

It becomes a symbol for the sacred ordinary. 

This is an edited version of a post from about 10 years ago. In the original I used a painting of my own to illustrate but thought it would be better to use the Van Gogh painting referred to in the post. Thought I’d add a little music about perception, as well. Here’s a nice version of Doctor My Eyes from Jackson Browne performed with Playing For Change which brings musicians from around the world together online to perform classic songs.

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Pablo Picasso- Harlequin with Glass, 1905

How often have I found that wanting to use blue,
I didn’t have it so I used a red instead of the blue.

–Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso is probably the most quoted of artists, though many things are mistakenly attributed to him. It’s a case that if it sounds interesting and you’re not sure who might have said it, you credit him or Shakespeare or Lincoln or some other iconic figure.

But I have a feeling that the quote I chose here today is actually his. I can’t see Lincoln saying it.

I certainly know the circumstance to which he refers.

Been there, done that.

In a pinch, you just make do with what you have because you can’t always wait until you have perfect conditions, all the materials you desire, and a moment of inspiration are in complete alignment. Sometimes inspiration is there and you don’t have what you would ideally want to use but you still want to make that mark.

A number of years back, I was having some real back problems. Up until then, I normally painted in a standing position but the pain forced me to sit. I found that there were points where I would reach for a color that I would normally use in certain instances and find it well out of reach. Instead of straining out of my seat and limping across the room to get it, I would take whatever was within my reach and try to either replicate the color or completely substitute another color.

In many ways, it was a good experience. Where I had used reds before, there were blues or greens. Turquoise tended to turn to purples and maroons.

Because my work doesn’t depend on accuracy in depicting natural color, it actually stretched the work a bit more and reinforced that idea that one must make do with what one has at hand. It’s something I have often tried to impress on young artists, that they should never use not having everything they think they need to start as an excuse to not start.

If they have a real creative urge, then they will make do, they will find a way.

The results may exceed what their mind had imagined.

I was recently reminded of this post which ran back in 2018.  I’ve been working diligently on new work for my upcoming annual June show at the Principle Gallery.

I’m rough on my brushes and as I work, they often change a lot as I use them. They wear away the edges and bristles go astray. They then begin to perform in an individual manner, meaning that the mark they make at that point is unique to that brush and way different that the mark it made when I first began using it.

I find that adapting to this change in the brush gives the work a unique quality as well. It sometimes adds a roughness in places where I might not have desired it or even thought of before. It’s surprising at times and almost always adds something unique and of value to the piece in my eyes. I have found that a similarly composed piece painted at a different phase in the evolution of the brush being used has an altogether different feel in its surface.

And I like that. Not having the perfect brush and adapting to the change in a brush is a form of making do, which is an important aspect of the creative process. Making do often creates a uniqueness that differentiates work.

Now, excuse me I have work to do. Or should I say, make do?

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Van Gogh- Prisoners Exercisng

Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I have forgotten.

–André Breton, Nadja (1928)

The words above from Andre Breton, widely renowned as being the founder of the Surrealist movement, have been lingering in my head lately.

I believe that’s mainly because I often refer to my work as being a search for some intangible thing– meaning or purpose. That sounds expansive, as though the search takes me to new and exciting places and planes of thought.

A real exploration for something new and remarkable.

But Breton’s words made me think that my search is, as he writes, an illusion and that much of what I do is revisiting themes, thoughts, and ideas that have been with me for a long time. I go over them time and time again trying to glean what might have went unrecognized when I first encountered them or were seen then forgotten.

It is not an expansive journey at all. It is likely more akin to a donkey endlessly walking the circular path around the grindstone it powers at a gristmill.

Or maybe to be more accurate, it is like the fevered circling by inmates Van Gogh portrayed in his 1890 painting shown at the top, which, by the way, was a copy of an earlier Gustave Doré print. The prisoners are no doubt dreaming of finding their way a better place or state of being. They probably go through a wide range of emotions as they are reflecting on their pasts, trying to figure out how they ended up there or where they will be in the future.

There is probably some pretty creative thinking going on there. Maybe the minds of those ever-circling inmates in prisons and asylums– or donkeys– are not far-removed from those of artists?

I can’t say. Nor can I say whether this endless circling masquerading as a search is good or bad. It is all I know so, for me, it feels appropriate. Built in.

Got to run. I have to try to find something new here this morning. Don’t know if it will feel more like a studio, prison or asylum. Doesn’t matter– it’s the same circle.

Here’s a song that feels appropriate this morning. This is Will It Go Round in Circles from the late Billy Preston.

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