Redtree Times

Early Interior (1994)

To defend painting: One has to believe in what one is doing, one has to commit oneself inwardly, in order to do painting. Once obsessed, one ultimately carries it to the point of believing that one might change human beings through painting. But if one lacks this passionate commitment, there is nothing left to do. Then it is best to leave it alone. For basically painting is pure idiocy.

–Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting, Writings (1962-1993)

For some reason this small early painting always gets a response when I come across it. I don’t exactly know why. Don’t even know why I painted it in the first place. It was not planned out in any way. It just kind of emerged.

I wrote about it here back in 2013, writing that when looking back at old work, there are sometimes anomalies, pieces that seem to have no precedent in my work at the time. Works that just kind of pop up and have no traces in the works that followed. Maybe that’s the attraction for me, that they are singular and exist in their own little universe, serving little of any purpose for me.

They are what they are.

I wrote in the earlier post that I had no idea of where this might go when it started with the checkerboard pattern of the tablecloth and how the cross on the wall was a last-minute addition which changed the painting’s whole feeling for me. That along with the grimy walls gave it the feeling and atmosphere of a tenement for me.

I ended the paragraph I wrote then by saying that looking at it made me wonder what might have happed had I followed up on it.

Could I have made it the basis for my artistic path?

It’s a silly question, actually, one that can’t be fully answered. You never know what creative breakthroughs might transpire or what avenues might open from any path you follow.

But asking myself that question again this morning, I immediately knew the answer.

The answer was a resounding No.

I quickly recognized that it would have been doomed to fail simply because it didn’t instantly inspire the required passionate commitment. The fact that I never followed up is ample evidence and, while I very much like this piece for what it is, I can clearly see now that it lacked the power to inspire.

By inspire I mean that it didn’t light that fire that burns in you to get to the next painting before you have even put the final touches on the last one. I can only see this painting lighting that fire is short bursts that would quickly go out.

My life as a painter has depended on that fire and it has been present for most of the last thirty-plus years. Occasionally it smolders and there are only embers. Times when circumstances create a creative block. But it remains alive and only takes a small bit of breath to bring it back to life.

I didn’t sense that fire in this early piece then nor do I now. That doesn’t make my appreciation of it diminish in any way. Its oneness might actually be its strength.

But much as Richter wrote at the top, it lacked the passionate commitment and I did the best possible thing– I left it alone.

I am leaving the last sentence of his passage alone today though there are many days when I agree heartily with the statement.

We’ll save that for another day.

Here’s a song that sort of fills the bill here. This is Mumford & Sons cover of I’m On Fire from Bruce Springsteen.

Now, git or you might get burned…