Redtree Times

The Heart Beats in Winter— Coming to the West End Gallery

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

~Henry Miller, The World of Sex (1940)

This is a new painting that is part of my October solo exhibit at the West End Gallery. It is a smaller piece at 12″ by 12″ but feels a bit larger with the visual bite– or oomph as I often call the impact of a painting– it provides. It is called The Heart Beats in Winter.

It has a lot of things in it that please me greatly. Most of them are parts of some sort of polarity or contrasts to each other. The painting itself– its strokes and surface– feels raw and rough yet it doesn’t feel sloppy, having an organic feeling of precise organization. It is as it should be.

It also feels cool and stark in tone but also carries a warmth that comes through from the warm colors in the layers of its underpainting. These warm colors are muted by the layers of white above them which allows the Red Tree and the Red Roofs to have greater contrast in the scene. I toned down the roof so that the Red Tree fully dominated the space.

Another part of this painting that interests me is one that is not apparent to the viewer of the painting in its final state. This painting begins on a layer of black paint over a textured gesso surface. This painting’s texture, with its finger swirls and trowel marks, becomes very evident as the painting progresses. On this black textured surface, I then lay out my composition in red oxide paint, as I almost always do, that is applied in a variety of tones that inform the later layers that will be applied above them.

Over this red oxide layer, I then proceed to apply the final underlaying colors of each block. I used a variety of crimsons, magenta, and deep purples here. The sky and the water of the lake is a purple that is almost black to the eye, but purple enough to make a difference later in the painting process. At this point the painting is a dark and almost drab thing to look at it. It would have discouraged me many years before. But the next step begins a remarkable transformation that is exciting to see as each bit of white brings all sorts of light to the scene. And when the final layer of white paint is laid over the moon, which had been left with only the red oxide beneath it, the whole painting takes on a marvelous glow that is far removed from that dark drab state it was in only a short time before.

I was originally visualizing a bare tree instead of the Red Tree in this piece as it progressed. But when it came time to insert the tree, I opted for the Red Tree. A bare tree would have worked well though I would have probably made it larger the Re Tree as it is now. You see, the Red Roofs were already in place, creating the base of a pyramid on which whatever tree I opted for would top. The red slashes of the roof were pretty powerful at this point and a bare tree with little color would require some size to overcome the strength of the reds. The Red Tree, on the other hand, would complete the pyramid easily in a smaller and less dominant size.

The Red Tree with the anachronism of its full foliage in winter, tells a much different story than a bare tree here. I see it as being symbolic of overcoming whatever hardship befalls you, of finding the beauty and joy of life even in desolation. Of our ability to overcome despair. I suppose that is why I chose the passage from Miler at the top, particularly this sentence:

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

And as the line preceding this sentence points out, we cannot run away from or shut our eyes to the darkness that surrounds us. We must face it bravely with strength and with eyes and mind open. This was written in 1940 at a point of when the future of the world was very much in jeopardy. Darkness was enveloping the world and running or looking away was no longer an option.

Sounds familiar.

To sum up: So long as the heart beats, even in the darkest of times, we can choose to see the beauty and grace of this life. We can endure.

Here’s a song from Macy Gray with a message that seems to echo that thought. This is Beauty in the World.

The Heart Beats in Winter will be included in my annual solo show at the West End Gallery in Corning, NY. This year’s show, my 25th there, is titled The Jubilee Dance and opens Friday, October 16 with an Opening Reception from 5-7 PM.