Redtree Times

Anywhere Everywhere— Now at the West End Gallery

I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things. My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance. O Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute! I forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.

—Rabindranath Tagore, The Gardener (1915)

The title of the new painting shown above is Anywhere Everywhere. It is a larger piece coming in at 20″ high by 40″ wide on canvas. The title refers to the fact that the roads and waters of the world will take you anywhere and everywhere.

For me, it speaks of the desire to be engaged in the world, to know far flung places and things. The sun here serves as a compass showing all the many directions in which the traveler can go. The purple hills in the distance take on an exotic quality, something unknown to us yet familiar. There is a lot of what I would call dynamism in this painting. It feels like it is brimming with potent energy underneath yet it maintains a tranquil stillness. 

As though it is saying one can find contentment here or there. Anywhere and everywhere.

The compass-like appearance of the sun was not intentional when I first began employing this motif in some of my paintings. It started simply as a compositional element, something that added visual interest within the mosaic-ish blocks that make up the sky. At first, I began to see it as representing the invisible energy of the sunlight breaking through darkness into our awareness in a visible manner. It transformed over the years to appearing more as a sort of stylized compass.

However, I still often see it as the sun’s beams breaking through. And sometimes, I think it is neither that nor the compass. It sometimes feels more like something that I can’t quite identify or put a name to.

Maybe it just is what it is. 

And I guess, for most things that is just as it should be– content in being as one is, here or there, anywhere and everywhere…

Anywhere Everywhere is hanging now in my Persistent Rhythm show at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. The exhibit officially opens next Friday, July 19, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. A Gallery Talk for this show will take place at the gallery on Saturday, August 10, from 11- noon. There will be more details forthcoming on this because there are always details, aren’t there?