On the Flats (1995)– Now at West End Gallery
May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.
–Virgil, Georgics (29 BCE)
In my solo show at the West End Gallery that opens Friday, there is a group of five paintings from my earliest days as a painter. I call them my vintage work. I have shared all of them here on the post in the past month or two except for this particular piece, titled On the Flats. I have it listed as being from 1995 but in fact it was painted in November of 1994, several months before my work began showing publicly at the West End.
However, it did show briefly back in 1995. I can tell not from records or anything written but from the awful matting that adorned it for decades. It was obviously one of my first attempts at presenting my work. I was totally unaware how to mat and frame the work that needed to be under glass and didn’t yet realize that a simple white cotton mat was the best way to show my work without distracting from it or even negatively affecting it. The mat I had on this was a textured gray one with a maroon border around the image. Unflattering in every way.
For years, I looked at this painting in that surrounding mat, not fully realizing how it affected my own judgement of it. Only when I finally removed the mat recently did I truly recognize the quality of this piece. The sky, for example, was a perfect example of the coloration I was seeking in my work, a complex blend of hues achieved by adding and subtracting the pigments in a way that let the white surface glow through.
The sky in this piece is exceptional, and I doubt that I could replicate it now. It is a unique product of its time. That actually can be said for a lot of my work. My process continually changes as does my color palette and even my surfaces. This was painted on watercolor paper without the gesso that became the preferred base for my surfaces.
I actually look at this piece with a bit of envy now because I know how attuned I was then o the particular process that created it. My work has grown and widened in its scope but, in the process, some things are lost along the way and most likely will never be recovered. When I painted this piece back in late 1994, I thought it was beyond me, as both a painter and a person. Looking at it now, I no longer think it is beyond me as a person. It took years for me to catch up with it. But as a painter, it is still beyond me, though for different reasons.
Another thing I like about this piece is its tangible sense of place and its feel. I am a hill person by nature and live in an area marked by valleys of varying sizes. Some are very narrow, running at the base of two hills alongside creeks that carved their tight little valley. Others are broad and airy, as though they exist in a dome of clear air. One local town is named Big Flats for very obvious reasons.
This wide valley flatland was exactly the sort of place that made me give up writing years before. When I aspired to be a writer, I found that my work always gravitated to descriptions of wide spaces and silence, with little narrative. Hardly the stuff that made for great reading. I don’t know that I made a conscious decision then, but it showed me plainly that I had to find a better outlet to express myself, one that made wide open space and silence more palatable to myself and the viewer.
Luckily, I fell off a ladder and ended up as a painter.
That’s the whole story this morning.
Here is the immortal Otis Redding with Down in the Valley. Doesn’t get much better than this.
As I said, On the Flats and four other vintage paintings (shown at the bottom of the page) are included in The Jubilee Dance, my 25th solo exhibit at the West End Gallery. The show is now hanging and is available for previews and presales. The show officially opens this coming Friday, October 16, with an opening reception that runs from 5-7 PM. Hope to see you there.
There is also a Gallery Talk accompanying the show that takes place on Saturday, November 7, beginning at 11 AM. Details coming in the weeks ahead though I am pretty sure there be things given away. If you know, you know.
Bottle Factory (1994)
Factory View (1994)
The Heights (1994)
Eldridge Park (1994)