Redtree Times

Dance Me to the End of Love— Coming to West End Gallery

Oh, let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone
Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon
Show me slowly what I only know the limits of
Dance me to the end of love
Dance me to the end of love

— Leonard Cohen, Dance Me to the End of Love (1984)

This week has been a rush of trying to finish up framing and other details for my new work for my upcoming solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that I will deliver at the end of next week. The show itself, The Jubilee Dance, opens the following Friday, October 16. You would probably be surprised at the amount of work that goes into getting paintings ready for a decent sized show. I’ve done 70+ solo shows over the decades, so I often don’t even realize how much actual effort it takes. I just do it.

However, the preparation for this show seems much more difficult than in past years, even in those years when I was rushing right up to the moment I had to begin loading work for delivery. The difference this year comes, of course, from some physical difficulties. I’ve talked about the fatigue from my cancer treatment here that has plagued me in recent months. That certainly has played a part in getting ready for this show.

But worse than that is pain in my ribs that sprung up in the past week. It is in the area where I received radiation. The pain and the limits imposed on my range of motion has made everything harder to accomplish, not to mention that it makes it hard to comfortably sleep for any appreciable amount of time, which only adds to the already present fatigue. Thankfully, large doses of Advil through the day help enough that I can still work at a decent pace. We think it might be a broken rib from the thinning of the bone from both radiation and the effect of my medication. Still waiting for authorization from my insurer for a PET scan.

But stuff is getting done. That’s the main thing.

This morning I got into the studio just after 4 AM and began to work on photography and titles for a few still untitled pieces for the show. One of the small but absolutely necessary details. I had just finished editing the image for the painting at the top, a 15″ by 30″ canvas that has been a favorite of mine since it was painted. It hits every mark for me with its rich color and atmosphere and how everything harmonizes. It sings for me.

I was trying to determine what to title it when a favorite Leonard Cohen song came on. The song was Dance Me to the End of Love. I knew immediately that this was the title for this painting. Maybe it’s just my tiredness, but hearing with that image in front of me made me a bit emotional. This no doubt came from a feeling I got from it while it sat untitled in the studio. It felt to me like it represented a certain dusk or ending of something. The end of the road, the end of time, the end of light or color– something in that vein.

The interesting thing is that this sense of an imminent ending was not sad at all. There is a bit of wistfulness, but the painting as a whole feels joyous to me. It is as though the day is ending, there is great contentment and gratitude for the beauty and love that has been bestowed before the darkness closes in.

The joy that comes in the dance of life.

How could I not borrow that song title for this painting?

I most likely have mentioned here in the past how I used to both title and judge my work in the earlier years. It has probably been a while so I’ll describe it again. back then, I would place the painting on my easel and walk away with my back to it. I would try to pretend that it was not my painting, that it was 50 years in the future and I was stumbling upon this painting in a junk shop or a garage sale. With this in my head, I would then turn and take it in with a quick glance. Was there something in this painting that would draw the attention and captivate this future me? Was there any quality in it that would make it seem like a found treasure to that future me? And with that quick glance, what was the first thing that jumped out at me and made an impression? What feeling did it immediately give?

It sounds dopey, I know. But you’d be surprised how effective it was. Well, I think it was effective. Maybe I am just a bit delusional on that front.

Anyway, it seemed to work.

Don’t know why but I don’t use that process anymore. There are probably a lot of reasons for that but I don’t want to get into them this morning. I have too much to do before today’s first dose of Advil wears off.

Here is Leonard Cohen and Dance Me to the End of Love.

PS- The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens two weeks from today, Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM. I will be there come hell or high water, so stop in and we can spend a few minutes chatting.

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Hope is the thing...- Coming to West End Gallery

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

–Emily Dickinson, Hope is the thing with feathers (1861)

I have had a proclivity for painting snowy landscape as of late. I wrote and spoke recently about the immersion of the process of painting these pieces, how it focuses my attention and distracts me from the world outside my field of vision. That might well explain why I am drawn to painting these paintings lately, but it might be more than that.

I have simply been in a wintry mood in recent weeks. I don’t know that I can describe what I mean by that. Silent and cooly distant? Pensive, maybe even a little melancholy? In survival mode, just trying to get by?

Maybe. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling for me, one of those for which words often come up short for me.

I struggled to find a title for this new painting that is part of my upcoming West End Gallery show. It’s one of the last paintings completed for the show, a small piece, only 6″ by 8″ on canvas.  it was not large in size but seemed to have much to express. Nothing I came up with for its title seemed to capture the feel that I was taking from it.

I finally got to listen to the title track from the new album from Rhiannon Giddens and knew that it was right for this piece. The song is her musical take on the Emily Dickinson poem, Hope is the thing with feathers, written in the opening months of the Civil War. The words from Dickinson and their delicate yet powerful treatment by Rhiannon hit me pretty hard. And though Dickinson’s bird was a songbird and not a crow or raven, I knew it had to be the title for this little piece.

The caw of the crow and the croak of the raven are music to my ears.

Below is a video of the song from Rhiannon Giddens showing collage artist Uzoma Samuel Anyanwu working on the large portrait of her that graces the new album. Watching his progress is fascinating.

Hope is the thing… is included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery that opens two weeks from tomorrow, Friday, October 16. There is an opening reception at the gallery on October 16 that runs from 5-7 PM.

Hope– there’s that word again– you can make it.

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