Trip the Light Fantastic— Coming to Principle Gallery, June 2025
Come, and trip it as ye go
On the light fantastick toe…
–John Milton, L’Allegro, (1645)
Trip the light fantastic. From Milton’s 1645 poem, it originally meant to dance nimbly. But for some reason, perhaps its phrasing or the derivations of the term over the centuries, it’s a term that summons up all sorts of images in my mind. But for the purpose of the new painting shown here, nimbly dancing might well fit as a description.
Using the phrase as its title definitely came to mind as the painting took on its final form. With the lively, rhythmic spirals and bright undercolor in the sky along with the rolling undulations of the sea, there is a feeling of a dance of sorts in piece for me. Of movement and countermovement, of rhythm matching rhythm and the joy that comes when that movement seemingly becomes effortless.
As though the two rhythms have become one.
As you may know, I am not a sailor. So, I can only imagine that there are those magical moments when the sea, the winds, and the sailor feel as one. I would imagine that would be an exhilarating feeling of unbridled joy and freedom.
That’s what I see in this piece. I feel lightened and brightened by it. But that’s just me…
This painting, Trip the Light Fantastic, is 15″ by 30″ on canvas and is from my annual solo exhibit at the Principle Gallery in Alexandria, VA. This year’s exhibit, my 26th there, is titled Entanglement and opens on Friday, June 13. Much of the work in this year’s show deals thematically with the bands and tangles of energy that make up everything, including us in our human form.
Much of it entails representing that energy in the sky of these pieces in a variety of ways– as twisting knot-like ribbons without beginning or end or cacophonous bands that interweave over and under one another. There are also some, such as this painting, that employ colorful rhythmic spirals.
It all makes for a striking look in each piece, one that make me really stop and consider each. The skies are often the central figures in this work, as much as the boat or the Red Tree or the house, and it’s hard to not dwell on finding some sort of meaning in them. There’s an almost meditative, therapeutic feel in many of these pieces for myself, both in the painting and the viewing.
Does that translate to other viewers? I don’t know. And maybe that doesn’t matter in the long run. It felt like I didn’t have any choice but to paint these pieces. In some weird way, they demanded to be painted at this point in time.
Maybe I needed them for some reason. Some purpose.
I haven’t figured out the why of this. I only have the what at this point. And maybe, like so many things, I will never get the answer I seek. Maybe I am supposed to only ask the question.
If that’s the case, so be it. I am satisfied in continuing my search without answers if every so often I get to trip the light fantastic…
Redtree Times 
I love that title. I will say that the first thing it evoked was this song, which I used in a post some years ago, after my cataract/lens implant surgery. The project was creative, and a great way of expressing what it means to trip the light fantastic.
Of course, ‘tripping the light fantastic’ also evokes the 1894 song, “Sidewalks of New York.”
“East Side, West Side, all around the town
The tots sang “ring-around-rosie,” “London Bridge is falling down”
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O’Rourke,
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York.”
I did not know that the phrase was in this song. Interesting!
The swirls in the picture seems to me, what the wind would look like blowing the boat along.
That’s pretty much how I see it, too.
[…] reading his post about this painting, I mentioned my own association with the title he’d chosen. During my […]