On the Blue Side— Included in “Continuum: The Red Tree at 25“, Opening June 14 at Principle Gallery, Alexandria, VA
I once wrote a short story called ‘The Best Blues Singer in the World,’ and it went like this: ‘The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.’ End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I’ve been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story.
–August Wilson
I came across quote above from playwright August Wilson recently. It struck a chord with me, especially as I am in the hectic midst of prepping work for my annual solo show next month at the Principle Gallery. Sometimes when I am surrounded by new work at this point in getting ready for any solo show, the idea that I am constantly rewriting the same story over and over in my own work seems too obvious to ignore. Even more so for a show that focuses strongly on my signature element, the Red Tree.
It used to bother me. I worried that the story I was writing wasn’t good enough or not interesting enough to hold a viewer for too long or that they would simply tire of that ubiquitous Red Tree.
But over the years, that worrying has faded a bit. Not fully, especially at this point in prepping for a show. But it has become less bothersome. I think some of this has to do with looking at the work of other artists across a variety of mediums. I found that many– maybe most– tell the same story with their work with slight variations and changes. Small additions and subtractions, changes in tone and location, speeding up and slowing down.
In a NY Times article from April of 2000, Wilson explained that this is because the artist works, like the Balboa in his story, in their own private ocean, one that is fed from tributary streams of their personal and cultural identity, their experiences, thoughts, and beliefs.
Their ocean is their story.
All they are and know. And as they say, a writer should write about what they know firsthand. Wilson put it this way in the article:
Before one can become an artist one must first be. It is this being in all its facets, its many definitions, that endows the artist with an immutable sense of himself that is necessary for the accomplishment of his task. Simply put, art is beholden to the kiln in which the artist was fired.
In short, the story my work attempts to tell is a representation of my personal ocean. I guess in my case, it is more of a landscape than an ocean. It may seem narrow at times but it tells the story I need to tell and in the only way I know how.
As I have recognized this, it feels as though the years have allowed me to hone my story, to fine tune it as though I am constantly rewriting and reediting it.
Or maybe it is more like genetic natural selection. When a piece works in a way that excites or please me now, it feels as though it is a result of the many other paintings that came before it. As though it were an ancestral descendant of those earlier pieces, taking what was best from them and enhancing those things. Maybe making them better or, at least, telling the story is a clearer and more direct way.
That’s kind of what I see in this new painting, On the Blue Side. It’s a simply composed painting, like a story I have told innumerable times before. But it takes that same storyline and embellishes it with new nuances and touches that result in it feeling like something new, all unto itself. Something that moves and surprises me.
Yet, I see the same story in it.
How could I not? It’s my story. My ocean. Or should I say, my hillside, my fields, my Red Tree?
I call this painting, 18″ by 18″ on canvas, On the Blue Side. It’s a title I took from a song, Blue Side of the Mountain, that Chris Stapleton wrote with Mike Henderson, in 2008 while both were members of the bluegrass group, The SteelDrivers. It felt like the song related to this painting in that, while I have often dwelt “on the blue side of that mountain where the sun don’t ever shine,” I now know that even though I can’t see the sun directly, I can still see the light from it above me.
And that gives me the hope to keep hanging on. To keep telling my story. The only one I know.
Here’s that song from The Steeldrivers from a 2008 performance.
Redtree Times 