Redtree Times

The haiku that reveals seventy to eighty percent of its subject is good. Those that reveal fifty to sixty percent, we never tire of.

–Matsuo Bashō (1644-1694)

That same formula that Bashō described above might well apply to most art.  I feel my own work expresses itself most effectively when it says a little less. In the early days when I was just beginning to show my work that was actually a thought I tried to keep in the front of my mind. That reminder kept me focused on the shape, color, and rhythm of the elements, avoiding extraneous detail that might clutter or cloud whatever the painting might express.

I even had a series at the time that I called Haiku which were stripped down pieces without much detail, allowing the form and color to tell what it would. The idea was that there should be enough revealed to gently lead the viewer to filling in whatever narrative they needed to hear– or see. They remain a favorite in my mind though I have few images of those paintings. My early documentation was sometimes lacking and the slides that do have are spotty at best.

The painting shown here, One from 1997, is not precisely from that series but it upholds all the values of it. It is spare and simple. The nuance of its colors and the rightness of the curve of the tree trunk set against a horizon that shows itself in the white reveal of the paper between the sky and the yellow field tell me all I need to know.

It has a simplicity and fullness that is easy to overlook. Indeed, I have looked at this piece for many years when reviewing older work and I often glide by this one. But when I do take the time to look closer at it, I am filled with its sense of rightness.

It is exactly what it should be.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

And that pleases me greatly. And it makes me chuckle a bit because that unnamable and unknowable thing I have sought in my work for almost 30 years since this was painted was right there in front of me all the time. I just didn’t fully recognize it then.

Perhaps it took years of winding my way through the labyrinth of life and art to come back to this point, one that I had passed before. But now time and experience allowed me to see it with changed eyes. It was the same, but I was different.

I look at it now with a renewed sense of wonder and it gazes back at me with the same stoic stillness that it has always possessed. It needs nothing from me yet shares all it has with me.

And we are one.

Here’s performance of the U2 song, One, from Mary J. Blige in memory of Nelson Mandela at the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 11, 2013. It seems to fit well this morning.

Stick around and give a listen if you wish. Or not. It matters not.

Hey, that could be a haiku…