I worry about this time of the year…I remember last year about this time… it was two o’clock in the morning, and I was sound asleep… Suddenly, out of nowhere, this crazy guy with a sled appears right on my roof… He was okay, but those stupid reindeer kept stepping on my stomach!
— Snoopy, Peanuts (23 Dec 66)
What better way to wash away the stench from the subject of yesterday’s post than to take a little break with the Peanuts gang? This little world created by Charles M. Schulz in 1950 represents the better parts of us. Empathy for others, a sense of innocence and humanity, and a joy in living immediately come to mind, all qualities that seem to be lacking with yesterday’s subject.
Below is a post from 2014 on how the Peanuts comics influenced my work. It contains the Christmas Dance scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas so how can you go wrong?
At a gallery opening last week, a very pleasant man asked if my work was influenced by the Peanuts cartoons. He said the work had that same feeling for him.
The question kind of came out of the blue so I laughed at first. I went on to say that, of course, these cartoons had been a large influence on my work and probably the way I see things in general.
The Peanuts strip in the paper was a must-read every day and I remember vividly when A Charlie Brown Christmas first appeared in 1965, even though we had to watch on a black and white TV. Snoopy was the first thing I ever learned to draw, the result of an older boy on my school bus (thank you, Tom Hillman, wherever you might be) showing me how to do so in several easy steps. Throughout grade school Snoopy was drawn all over every piece of paper I came across, his Joe Cool and World War I Flying Ace characters being personal favorites.
I explained that many of those early cartoons — the great Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes , the very early black and white Popeye cartoons, the Disney cartoons with their gorgeous color, and so many more–-informed and influenced the way I looked at things and set a pattern for the way I would later interpret the landscape. They created a visual shorthand in the work that simplified the forms in the surrounding landscape yet still gave a sense of place and time and emotion.
And that’s precisely what I try to do in my work today.
For me, A Charlie Brown Christmas is as close to perfect as any cartoon can be. It’s a wonderful blending of mood, movement and music with a smartness and sweet charm that never seems to diminish. For this time of year, what could be more fitting than the Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas Dance from it?
Have a great day and, if you feel like it, dance along with the Peanuts gang. It’ll do ya’ good…
Redtree Times 